Wind & Solar Leasing in Wheatland County, Montana

A 90-turbine facility under Invenergy ownership, selling power to NorthWestern

Judith Gap Wind Farm, north of Harlowton, has a nameplate capacity of 135 megawatts spread across 90 turbines and has been operating since 2005 -- Montana's first utility-scale wind project. The facility is owned by Invenergy, a Chicago-based renewable energy developer, and sells its output to NorthWestern Energy under a power purchase agreement rather than serving Wheatland County ratepayers directly. For a landowner with an existing turbine or transmission easement, Invenergy (or whichever entity currently holds the project, since renewable assets are sometimes sold between developers and long-term owners) is the counterparty on lease payments and any future easement negotiation, not NorthWestern.

Montana requires a decommissioning plan and bond for a project this size -- ask which option the operator chose

Montana law requires wind energy facilities with a capacity of 25 megawatts or more -- which covers Judith Gap several times over -- to provide the state Department of Environmental Quality with a decommissioning plan and a financial bond covering eventual turbine removal and site restoration. There's a documented alternative: if the facility owner reaches its own restoration agreement directly with the property owner where a turbine or related infrastructure sits, a copy of that private agreement can substitute for the state bonding requirement. If you're evaluating a parcel with an existing turbine, access road, or substation on it, ask specifically which path applies -- a state-monitored bond, or a private restoration agreement between the operator and the landowner -- because the two create very different levels of protection if the operator later becomes insolvent or simply walks away from an aging facility.

This bonding requirement is a statewide rule, not something Wheatland County itself administers, so the county planning contact (the shared, Big-Timber-based planner described on the hub) is not the right first call for decommissioning-bond status -- that question goes to Montana DEQ's energy program.

Lease terms and setback distances vary by source -- verify the actual recorded document

Reporting on Montana wind-lease payments generally, not specific to a confirmed Judith Gap contract, has described monthly per-landowner payments in the range of several thousand dollars, and separate reporting on proposed (not necessarily enacted, and not confirmed as Judith Gap's own standard) statewide setback concepts has floated distances such as 3,000 feet from public roads and 1.5 miles from a non-participating neighbor's property line. None of these figures should be treated as Judith Gap's actual terms for a specific parcel -- wind-lease payment structures (per-turbine, per-acre, or a blended formula) and setback commitments are set in the individual easement or lease agreement recorded against that property, and they can vary between landowners within the same project depending on when they signed and what was negotiated.

Before assuming any income figure or setback distance applies to a parcel you're considering, pull the actual recorded easement or lease document from the Wheatland County Clerk and Recorder's office. If the parcel has no existing wind infrastructure but sits within or near the broader wind-resource area, treat any lease-income expectation as speculative until an operator has actually approached the property, since wind development in a given area depends on transmission capacity and project economics that can change well before, or well after, neighboring parcels sign leases.