Afton joins list of cities regulating wind turbines

The city of Afton has become the latest metro-area community to add its patch to a crazy quilt of ordinances regulating residential wind turbines.

After more than a year of wrestling with the issue through its Planning Commission, the Afton City Council last month passed the ordinance and, at the same time, approved a conditional-use permit for a 100-foot-tall wind turbine that will be installed in November at a residence in an open area north and west of downtown Afton.

Minneapolis, Andover, Oakdale, Woodbury, Anoka, Plymouth, Cottage Grove, North St. Paul and Maple Grove are among metro-area cities that have passed or amended wind turbine ordinances in recent months.

In Afton, as elsewhere, the debates are similar: how to foster a new renewable energy technology while shielding residents from familiar land-use issues such as disruptive neighbors and changes to a community's character and aesthetics.

"It is a challenge to the technology -- clearly it is," said Lisa Daniels, executive director of Windustry, a nonprofit group that promotes renewable energy efforts in communities. "But you have to put projects together with the community at large in mind and what's safe for everyone."

Cities and counties have come up with different ways of regulating small-scale turbine projects. "There is always tension between local control and state regulation -- how local is local enough?" Daniels said.

Brian Ross, principal at CR Planning, works as a consultant to communities on a variety of land-use and economic development issues, including how to both encourage and regulate private wind turbines. With input from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and other agencies, he helped craft a model ordinance for local governments. He also gave a presentation to Afton officials as they developed their ordinance.

"It's a tricky question, because a lot of land-use standards address a variety of different goals," Ross said.

To the extent that local governments design ordinances to fit their own needs to protect things such as neighborhood character and aesthetics, there's a strong case for local control, he said.

But on some technical aspects of wind turbine regulation on which local officials might not have expertise -- issues such as safety, structural standards for turbines and the feasibility of a private residential project to actually capture wind energy -- "it doesn't make sense to do everything community-by-community," he said.

That was a driving factor behind creating the model ordinance, to give communities a legal baseline from which to work.

The physics of capturing wind energy in most areas requires a tower at least 100 feet tall, he said, which is why solar energy is usually a more viable alternative in urban and suburban residential areas.

In Afton's case, the open topography of much of the city makes it ideal for small-scale turbines, but protecting the character of the picturesque rolling landscape was a concern.

Jamie Borell, sales manager of Innovative Power Systems, the St. Paul company that is installing the turbine in Afton, has become accustomed to working with the sometimes-frustrating variety of regulations.

"We only want to install this technology where it is appropriate," he said. "We won't install a project where it's not an appropriate use for the technology."

The Afton turbine is expected to generate 20,000 to 30,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, which is three to four times more than is used in a typical home. That means the homeowner could be selling electricity back to Xcel Energy Co.

With prospects like that, Borell expects even stronger demand for alternative energy products. His firm started in 1991, and 2010 is shaping up into the company's best yet, even with more wind turbine and solar energy system installers in the market.