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Most commercial-scale community wind projects are multi-million dollar investment endeavors that require outside financing assistance. This section will give you some background on how to approach a bank or other financing entity. Loan terms will affect the bottom line of your wind energy project revenue, so understanding the requirements and options for financing your wind development are critical. Getting organized in the beginning will put your project in a much better negotiating position for acquiring favorable financing. With enough due diligence documentation, your project will be less risky and more attractive to a financing entity.

Double-declining balance, five-year depreciation schedule (I.R.C.
Subtitle A, Ch. 1, Subch. B, Part VI, Sec. 168 (1994) (accelerated cost
recovery system)) is another federal policy that encourages wind
development by allowing the cost of wind equipment to be depreciated faster.

This report was written by Mark Bolinger of the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory and published in March 2004. Find it online on the Laboratory website.

This guidebook was created by Charles Kubert for the Environmental Law and Policy Center in 2004. It talks about business models, sources of equity, grant and loan programs, incentives, and power purchase agreements for community wind projects. You'll find it online on the ELPC website.

Provides the owner of a qualifying facility with an annual tax credit based on the amount of electricity that is generated. By focusing on the energy produced instead of capital invested, this type of tax incentive encourages projects that perform adequately. In 2007, the rate for the PTC is 1.9¢/kWh. The PTC increases from year to year based on the consumer price index.

Income from certain types of investments qualifies as passive income. Tax paid on this income is considered passive tax. To take advantage of the Federal Production Tax Credit (the PTC) and Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS), you or a project partner must be paying taxes that fit into this category of tax liability.

Certain types of income, as defined by the IRS, such as rental income or income from businesses, in which the earner serves only as an investor and is not actively engaged in running the investment as defined by the IRS. See Passive Tax Appetite.

A common financial concept (and a critical component of Minnesota’s C-BED tariff), reflecting the idea that having a given amount of money today is more valuable than receiving the same amount of money in the future. C-BED requires utilities to determine the net present value of their rate schedule using the standard discount factor that they apply to their other business decisions.

Businesses can recover investments in certain property through depreciation deductions. The MACRS establishes a set of class lives for various types of property, ranging from three to 50 years, over which the property may be depreciated. For solar, wind, and geothermal property placed in service after 1986, the current MACRS property class is five years.