Like all of its other wind farms, Juhl was the original developer of the Woodstock Hills wind farm. Woodstock Hills was placed in service in 1999 and was previously owned in concert with two significant companies in the energy business as its institutional investor partners. The 10.2 MW wind farm utilizes 17 Vestas V-44 wind turbines and sells the wind power to Xcel Energy under the terms of a long-term power purchase agreement. Juhl Wind closed the acquisition last Thursday, April 28, 2011.
Juhl paid $400,000 to acquire a controlling, 99.9% ownership interest alongside the .1% local owner. The Company expects the wind farm to continue to generate revenue of approximately $1.2 million per year as it has historically. Details of the transaction have been described in Form 8K.
"Our acquisition of the Woodstock Hills wind farm is the first step in a very important element of our long term business strategy," stated Dan Juhl, CEO of Juhl Wind, Inc. "Our acquisition of existing wind farms will bring assets to our balance sheet, along with long-term, reliable revenue streams. We believe there is a large number of existing wind farms for us to consider and we are confident we have a unique skill set to properly evaluate, acquire, own and operate these assets."
"Combining wind farm assets with their associated revenue streams will help us build baseline revenue that we can count on year over year," added John Mitola, President of Juhl Wind, Inc. "We recently described this strategy to our investors in our annual 10K conference call and we are proud to have executed on this first transaction. Given that this first wind farm should bring us over $1 million per year in revenue, observers can clearly see that our base revenue can grow steadily with additional wind farm acquisitions."
"As we explained on our conference call, we felt that we were finally at a point in our growth cycle where it was appropriate to begin asset acquisitions, given the growing cash position on our balance sheet," continued Mitola. "We plan to balance our ongoing development activity with wind farm acquisitions, along with our long term Operations and Maintenance services. All of these elements will help us build a company with solid base revenues topped off by large steps from time to time due to development and construction revenue."
As noted above, the Woodstock Hills wind farm is now owned by Juhl Wind, Inc. in conjunction with a .1% local owner, which in this case is an entity controlled by Dan Juhl. The acquisition was approved by independent directors of the board of Juhl Wind, Inc. and was based on an independent analysis of the economics of the transaction.
Juhl Wind is an established leader in Community Based Wind Power development and management, focused on wind farm projects throughout the United States and Canada. Juhl Wind pioneered community-based wind farms, developing the currently accepted financial, operational and legal structure providing local ownership of medium-to-large scale wind farms. To date, the Company has completed 18 wind farm projects and provides operations management and oversight across the portfolio.
Juhl Wind services every aspect of wind farm development from full development and ownership, general consultation, construction management and system operations and maintenance. With its acquisition of the Woodstock Hills wind farm, the Company now owns and operates a 10.2 MW wind farm, Woodstock Hills which was acquired in April, 2011. Through its Next Generation Power Systems subsidiary ("NextGen’), Juhl Wind also provides full sales and service to smaller, on-site wind and solar projects in addition to our larger Community Wind Farms. Juhl Wind is based in Woodstock, Minnesota and is traded on the OTCBB under the symbol ‘JUHL’.
