Wind & Solar Leasing in Bon Homme County, South Dakota

Prevailing Wind Park: the scale, the developer, and where it sits today

Prevailing Wind Park is a 219.6-megawatt wind facility built across Bon Homme, Charles Mix, and Hutchinson counties, developed by Prevailing Wind Park LLC and now operated by SPower, a privately held renewable-energy company based in Utah. The project's footprint covers more than 50,000 acres of leased land between the towns of Avon, Tripp, and Wagner, with up to 61 turbines standing as tall as 590 feet from the ground to the blade tip. Construction was substantially complete by 2019-2020, and the project is now an operating fixture of the local landscape rather than a proposal -- which means there is a real operating history, including compliance issues, to check if a parcel you're considering sits anywhere near it.

How the lease side worked: acreage thresholds, not per-turbine deals alone

Landowners in the project area leased land to Prevailing Wind Park in exchange for payments, whether or not a turbine ended up sited on their specific tract -- a common structure in large wind projects, where participating landowners share in project revenue across the whole leased footprint rather than only the parcels that host a turbine pad. Reporting from 2018 described the project having surpassed 30,000 acres under lease at that point, with the developer indicating it needed to reach roughly 33,000 to 35,000 leased acres to make the project cost-effective to build -- meaning the project's eventual go-ahead was directly tied to hitting a specific local participation threshold, not just securing state and county permits. If you're offered a wind lease in Bon Homme County today, from SPower or another developer, that history is a useful reference point: ask directly whether payment is structured per acre leased, per turbine sited, or some combination, and get the acreage-participation math in writing rather than assuming your neighbors are all on the same terms.

The permitting process a nearby landowner would actually see

Prevailing Wind Park was permitted at the state level through the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission under Docket EL18-026, and South Dakota law requires the PUC to decide a wind energy facility application within six months of filing. The process included a public input hearing held July 12, 2018 at the Avon School in Avon, South Dakota, and the developer was required to file proof that it had mailed notice of the application to affected landowners, as required under South Dakota Codified Law 49-41B-5.2, along with a certificate of service to the Bon Homme, Charles Mix, and Hutchinson county auditors. The final permit carried more than 40 conditions covering things like road conditions during construction, protection of cultural resources, assignment of a public liaison officer for the project, and land restoration once construction wrapped up -- with the PUC specifically revising the proposed conditions on shadow flicker, sound levels, avian mortality, and decommissioning before granting approval.

That compliance framework isn't just paperwork from 2018 -- it's had a real life since. In 2020, as the last turbines were being completed, the developer asked regulators for a delay in meeting the project's sound-compliance standards, evidence that noise compliance around an operating wind project is something regulators and the developer have had to actively manage rather than a settled non-issue. If a parcel you're evaluating is near an existing turbine, it's worth asking the PUC (or searching its docket record for EL18-026) whether any complaints or compliance actions have been filed for turbines near that specific location, in addition to checking the county's current setback ordinance covered on the Bon Homme County hub.

Buying near an existing project, or considering your own lease

• If your parcel sits inside or near the roughly 50,000-acre area between Avon, Tripp, and Wagner, ask the seller and the Bon Homme County Register of Deeds whether the parcel is already subject to a recorded wind lease, easement, or option agreement -- these are typically recorded instruments and should show up in a normal title search.
• If you're weighing a new lease offer, ask specifically whether payment is acreage-based, turbine-based, or production-based, and over what term -- Prevailing Wind Park's own path to construction depended on hitting a specific leased-acreage threshold, so a developer's offer terms can shift depending on how much of the surrounding area has already signed on.
• Confirm the county's current wind-turbine setback and any decommissioning-security requirement directly with Bon Homme County Planning and Zoning -- ordinance text can be amended, and the hub's 500-foot figure and 2017 vote history should be treated as a starting point to verify, not a permanently fixed number.
• For a parcel near an operating turbine, check the SD PUC's docket record for EL18-026 for any filed noise, shadow-flicker, or other compliance issues tied to that specific turbine string before assuming the project has been complaint-free since 2019.