Wind Energy America Announces Financing for Minnesota Farm

Energy Resource, Nov 19, 2008

ENERGY RESOURCE-19 November 2008-Wind Energy America Announces Financing for Minnesota Farm(C)2008 JeraOne - http://www.jeraone.com

Wind Energy America Inc. today announced new financing that will allow it to begin construction and interconnect operations on its wind farm project in Minnesota.

The farm contains two of the Gamesa wind turbines acquired in the Boreal Energy asset purchase. When commissioning of these two turbines is completed, WNEA will receive its first material revenues from generating utility-scale electricity from wind power.

The Buffalo Ridge wind farm and its revenue production will be 100% owned by WNEA.

Financing for the wind farm project was obtained from a California holding company through a sale/leaseback of the company's Midwest Energy Center facility in Lincoln County, MN. WNEA received net proceeds of approximately $l,400,000 from this sale/leaseback transaction. It also has the option after 2 years to repurchase the facility at a price which represents a small percentage increase over the initial sale/leaseback price.

Robert Knutson, managing director of WNEA and responsible for obtaining and closing the funding, said, "Given the current difficulties of raising development capital due to the recent collapse of worldwide equity markets, we are pleased that WNEA has been able to obtain critical funding at this time. These proceeds have enabled us to satisfy substantial overdue bank debt secured by the project, pay for interconnect and other costs owed to the utility which will purchase electricity generated by the project, acquire the necessary transformer equipment and other wind turbine parts and materials, and retain an experienced wind power contractor to complete the project for us."

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