Wind & Solar Leasing in Lincoln County, Washington

Great Bend Wind: scope, status, and what "leased" means here

Great Bend Wind is a utility-scale wind project proposed by Triple Oak Power, a Portland, Oregon-based developer, targeting agricultural land between the towns of Davenport and Reardan, spanning both sides of US Highway 2 in the eastern portion of Lincoln County. As of the most recent reporting reviewed for this page, the company had signed lease agreements covering roughly 17,000 acres, with negotiations underway for at least another 8,000 acres, aiming for a final buildout of 60 to 100 wind turbines. A signed lease at this stage typically grants the developer an option and eventual easement rights over specific parcels in exchange for payments to the landowner, rather than transferring ownership -- but it is a real, binding legal commitment on any parcel already under lease, not a mere expression of interest.

Before finalizing turbine placement, Triple Oak installed meteorological towers -- temporary structures just under 200 feet tall -- to measure wind speed and direction across the project area, with the company describing a need for at least two years of data spanning all four seasons before committing to a final turbine layout. That means, as of this research pass, the project's exact footprint, turbine count, and construction timeline were not yet fixed. Triple Oak's own materials describe the project as expected to contribute millions of dollars over its operating life to Lincoln County, the Davenport and Reardan school districts, and local emergency services, in addition to payments to individual landowner partners.

A second developer, a second search area

Great Bend Wind is not the only wind-development interest active in the county. Tenaska, an Omaha-based energy company developing projects on behalf of Cordelio Power (a Canadian renewable-energy firm that would ultimately sell the generated electricity to local utilities), has been separately searching for project land west of Harrington, extending south toward the Adams County line -- an area that in places overlaps with Triple Oak's own Great Bend search territory. For land in this western part of the county, or near the Adams County line, confirm directly whether either company holds an active lease option nearby, since two developers pursuing overlapping search areas is itself a sign of how much commercial wind interest this part of the county has attracted.

The county's own zoning rules were being rewritten in response

Wind development at this scale doesn't happen in a regulatory vacuum. Lincoln County's planning commission had been working through a zoning-code update specifically addressing utility-scale wind and solar facilities -- including how far a turbine must be set back from roads and residential structures -- a process the reporting reviewed described as roughly a year out from its most recent public review point. This mirrors similar, often contentious, setback debates underway in neighboring Whitman and Columbia counties over the same wave of Palouse-region wind development. If your interest in the county is a wind lease itself, an adjacent property affected by turbine proximity, or simply land you want free of nearby turbines, confirm the current, adopted setback standard directly with the county's Planning Division -- and, for a lease specifically, review it with an attorney experienced in wind-easement agreements before signing, since these contracts typically run for decades and can bind successor owners.