Boulder firm working to build 320-megawatt Wyoming wind farm

BOULDER — A Boulder-based company is proposing to build a 21,000-acre wind farm northwest of Laramie, Wyo.

Paul Martin, president of Intermountain Wind LLC, headquartered at 2025 16th St. in Boulder, told Albany County, Wyoming, commissioners on Tuesday that the project would include 160 turbines with 2-megawatt capacities, a transmission line and more than 40 miles of access roads. Ideally, he said, permits would be applied for in December and received in March, with construction to begin late next year.

Intermountain Wind doesn’t build wind farms itself, Martin said.

“We are the initial sponsor of a portfolio of wind projects,” he said. “My company takes the earliest and greatest risk to make wind farms constructionready, or near construction ready. Then we bring in a partner — a utility or pension fund, for instance — that would finance it, and then they would own and operate it. We do the site selection, resource assessment, environmental reviews, make arrangements for interconnection with the grid, sell the power, permit it, sometimes even arrange the financing.”

Martin said Intermountain Wind would contract with a manufacturer such as Danish wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems A/S (OMX: VWS) — which has manufacturing facilities in Windsor, Brighton and Pueblo — to supply the turbines as well as an engineering and procurement contractor to install them.

“The value to us comes from the sale of the power to the consumer,” Martin said.

For the Wyoming project, Martin told county commissioners that his company is working with property owners to ensure that they’re willing to let the transmission line go through their land, and offering them a compensation package if they do. Wherever possible, he said, the line would avoid critical wildlife habitat and follow existing infrastructure such as railroads.

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