612 Year Waiting List for Wind Power in Minnesota

Really. Just ask Ryan Wolf, who has about 610 more years of waiting to go:

Mr. Wolf, of Le Sueur, Minn., has been waiting almost two years for the go-ahead to build 27 wind turbines in the southwest part of the state.

It's anyone's guess how much longer he'll be waiting, given a backlog of applications that technically could take more than 600 years to clear at the federal agency that stands between him and the renewable energy marketplace.

Here's why: bureaucratic nightmare.

The Midwest Independent Transmission System (Midwest ISO) -- the regional agency of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- is the only body that can give projects the go ahead to connect to existing power lines. And it requires two years to process each request.

Worse yet, all requests must be handled one at a time. Which means, technically, the agency has to spend two years on the project at the top of the list before proceeding to the one after, and so on, and so on. There are 306 requests right now in the queue. Hence the 612-year waiting list.

But apparently "big" changes are afoot:

"The queue is the biggest problem we're struggling with," agreed Clair Moeller, a vice president at the Midwest ISO.

Moeller's staff has adapted new procedures -- one is clustering several proposals into a single study -- so they expect to be able to clear the queue in 50 years instead of 600. And this spring he will ask federal regulators to approve more adaptations to further speed the process.

Fifty is better than 612 -- no doubt -- but a half a century to get the green light to build today's technology? Not exactly a solution. Especially at a time when Minnesota is chasing its pledge of getting 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025.

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