Wind Turbine Leasing in Somerset County, Maine

Part of a real, currently-operating 185-megawatt wind farm sits in Somerset County's own organized and unorganized land -- with actual negotiated per-turbine payments above the state's statutory floor, a 20-year community benefit agreement, and a documented county-level dispute over how the project gets taxed.

This page covers what's specific to Somerset County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

The Bingham Wind Project: real, current, and partly in Somerset County

The Bingham Wind Project is a 56-turbine, roughly 185-megawatt wind farm using Vestas V-112 3.3 MW turbines on 94-meter towers, built starting in 2016 and still operating today -- by one recent generation-output ranking, it was the 6th-largest of Maine's 236 power plants over a three-month stretch in 2026. Its footprint spans the organized town of Bingham (in Somerset County) and Mayfield Township, an unorganized territory also within Somerset County, with the remainder crossing into Kingsbury Plantation just across the line in Piscataquis County. This page focuses specifically on the Somerset County portion of the project -- Bingham town and the Mayfield Township UT -- and flags the Kingsbury Plantation piece as a separate, Piscataquis County matter rather than folding it in, since the two counties administer very different land-use and taxation frameworks for their respective shares.

Maine's statutory floor for wind-turbine community benefits, and what Bingham Wind actually paid

Maine law (Title 35-A, §3454) requires any expedited wind energy development to provide a community benefits package worth at least $4,000 per turbine per year, averaged over a 20-year period -- covering payments to host communities, energy-cost reductions, and land or natural-resource conservation donations, though this requirement doesn't affect the project's separate property tax obligations. Bingham Wind's actual negotiated agreements came in above that statutory floor, at roughly $5,530 per turbine. On top of that per-turbine figure, Bingham (the organized town) receives a separate community benefit agreement payment of $106,900 per year for 20 years under the project's original agreements. For anyone evaluating land near the project, or considering a wind-lease arrangement on their own Somerset County parcel with a future developer, this gives a real, verifiable benchmark for what "above the statutory minimum" has actually looked like for a comparable Maine wind project -- not a hypothetical range.

A real, documented dispute: how does Somerset County even value this for tax purposes?

Beyond the benefits payments, Bingham Wind produced a genuine, documented conflict between Somerset County and the state over the project's tax valuation. Somerset County officials filed a Freedom of Access Act request in 2017 with Maine Revenue Services seeking to understand how the state had determined its valuation of the wind development for tax purposes -- Maine Revenue Services denied the request, asserting the information was proprietary to the developer, and the county lost when it challenged that denial in court. Separately, the project was projected to generate roughly $2.1 million in average annualized property tax revenue in total (across the full project footprint, not solely the Somerset County share). If you're evaluating land specifically for its wind-development potential in Somerset County, understand that even the county government itself has had real, litigated difficulty getting full transparency into how a project like this gets valued -- a private landowner negotiating a wind lease should expect the same opacity and negotiate independent appraisal and valuation-disclosure terms into any lease rather than assuming county assessment records will fill that gap.

What this means for a Somerset County landowner considering a wind lease

Bingham Wind demonstrates that wind development in Somerset County is a real, active, financially substantial land use -- not a speculative or purely theoretical one -- with actual negotiated numbers on the record for both per-turbine landowner-adjacent payments and host-community benefits. It also demonstrates that Maine's statutory $4,000/turbine/year floor is exactly that: a floor, not a market rate, and that actual agreements in a comparable Somerset County project ran meaningfully above it. If you're a landowner approached by a wind developer, or evaluating a parcel partly for its wind-leasing potential, use Bingham Wind's $5,530/turbine and $106,900/year town-level figures as a real reference point in your own negotiation, and don't assume the statutory minimum is what an actual deal will pay. Separately, confirm whether your specific parcel sits in an organized town (ordinary municipal zoning and permitting apply) or Somerset County's Unorganized Territory (LUPC has zoning and permitting authority, as it did for the Mayfield Township portion of this project) -- that distinction determines who actually issues the permits a wind lease would depend on.

Wind Turbine Leasing in Somerset County: The Bingham Wind Project

The Bingham Wind Project: real, current, and partly in Somerset County

Maine's statutory floor for wind-turbine community benefits, and what Bingham Wind actually paid

A real, documented dispute: how does Somerset County even value this for tax purposes?

What this means for a Somerset County landowner considering a wind lease

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