No buyer for Bluff Point

A drive through southern Randolph County reveals a landscape dotted by windmills.
Parts of Madison and Tipton counties are similar, towers stretching toward the sky with their blades slowly spinning.
By now, southern Jay County was supposed to look much the same as its neighbor to the south and counterparts to the west. But not a single windmill has yet been erected.
Bluff Point Wind Farm, planned to be constructed in southern Jay County and northern Randolph County, remains in much the same state today as it was when the path toward construction hit a snag.
It’s in limbo as developer NextEra Energy, which is based in Florida, continues to search for a buyer for the power the project would generate.
Local officials had been hopeful, again, that construction would begin in the spring of 2016, but as the close of 2015 approaches that is unlikely.
“The reality is, given that we’re almost in 2016, and as (we’re) talking today we don’t have that customer secured, in all likelihood, while I don’t want to say it’s not possible to get it built in 2016, it’s probably more realistic that it would not be a 2016 project,” said Steve Stengel, a NextEra media relations representative.
Some of the renewed optimism locally came from recent action by NextEra that seemed to be pointing in the direction of construction.
Representatives from the company visited the county in the spring to reaffirm that all agreements — tax abatement, road use, etc. — remained in place.
Land leases, originally signed in 2007, have been renewed, and more met towers, which measure wind speed, have gone up.
In early November, Pike township farmer and wind farm project proponent Bob Lyons was called with a request to lease another 40 acres of his land.
All of those moves are part of Next-Era staying ready in case an energy buyer comes along, but not necessarily indications of movement toward construction.
“Not a lot has changed. We still believe it is a very viable project, but in order to move forward … we need a commitment from an off-taker for the power that three project would generate,” said Stengel. “Until we have that we just can’t move forward with construction. But the good news is that the project is pretty much ready to go, so if we were successful in securing a power purchase agreement for the project, the project is ready to move into construction.
“If a customer comes to us, we want to have options for that particular customer. And so sometimes that means having projects developed where we may not necessarily know who the ultimate customer might be.”
That’s where the Bluff Point project has been for about three years.
It was in December 2012 that the project seemed like a lock to move forward as NextEra representatives visited Jay County Commissioners, Jay County Council and Jay County Plan Commission meetings to nail down economic development, road use and decommissioning agreements and secure tax abatements.
But spring came and went, and in June 2013 it was announced that American Electric Power, which had been slated as the buyer for the power to be generated by Bluff Point Wind Farm, had reached a deal with EDP Renewables on construction of the Headwaters Wind Farm in southern Randolph County. Headwaters became operational in late 2014.
NextEra, which operates 110 active wind farms in the United States and Canada, has been looking for a new buyer for the 120 megawatts of power ever since.
“We in Jay County have been long-suffering with the project,” said Jay County Development Corporation executive director Bill Bradley of the effort that has been ongoing for nearly a decade. “We’ve anticipated this for many, many years. I would think we’re still hopeful that it’s going to happen at some point, but imminent, maybe not, which is sad.”
Bluff Point is planned as a $240-million project, with about two-thirds of that to be invested in southern Jay County and the rest in northern Randolph County.
The project as of 2013 called for the construction of 70 turbines — 49 in Jay County and 21 in Randolph County — though minor changes have been made because of improvements in efficiency and a variety of other factors. They are slated to be built in a 30-square-mile area of southern Jay County bordered by the Jay/Randolph county line and county roads 700 East, 250 West and 600 North.
Local officials continue to be cautiously optimistic that Bluff Point will eventually come to fruition and have said if that happens it will be an economic boost to Jay County.
The biggest positive factor, they say, is that the multi-million dollar investment will serve to expand the county’s tax base. Such an increase in assessed value would serve to lower the overall tax rate.
“The benefit to it is obviously the assessed valuation it brings to the tax rolls of the county,” said Bradley. “That’s really the major benefit. The job creation is usually anywhere from six to 10 people. Really, the bulk of it is in property taxes.”
Faron Parr, president of Jay County Commissioners, noted the importance of the road agreement, which requires NextEra to rebuild roads to their current state or better following construction of Bluff Point.
In addition to those factors, Lyons touts the production of “renewable and clean” energy.
“My refrigerator makes more noise than they do,” Lyons said of the turbines. “I don’t know what the downside would be.”
Though the project is ready to roll if an energy buyer comes along, Next-Era does face a handful of deadlines.
One of those is county related, as NextEra’s tax abatement extension from Jay County Council expires at the end of 2018.
The more pressing issue is that of the production tax credit (PTC), which gives companies creating renewable energy a 2.2-cent benefit per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of operation. The credit requires NextEra to move forward with Bluff Point by the end of this year in order to take advantage of the credit. But Stengel said officials at the company are hopeful Congress will move to extend that deadline.
The impact on Bluff Point if that extension does not come to fruition is not clear.
“We’re not going to speculate on what might happen after that,” said Stengel. “Our view today is that there’s a fairly good likelihood that they will do something, and if that doesn’t happen we’ll deal with that at the right time.”
Efforts to build a wind farm in Jay County began in 2006 when AEP announced it would be conducting a wind study. Three years later, officials from the company said testing showed the county as a favorable site and discussed the possibility of a 120-megawatt wind farm that would include 48 to 80 turbines.
Progress halted in May 2011 when AEP pulled out of the project in favor of a similar undertaking in Grant, Howard and Madison counties. But then it quickly found new life with NextEra taking over development four months later.
By the close of 2012 construction seemed on the horizon before plans stalled again when AEP decided to partner with the Headwaters project.
Parr said while he and others remain hopeful that the project will eventually move forward, Jay County is not banking on it.
“We’re going to go on and continue whether it happens or not,” he said. “It’s not like that was a make-it-or-break-it deal for the county. It wasn’t. But I think it would be a nice boost for the county in several areas.”