Special Assessment for Wind Energy Systems

For the purposes of property tax assessment, utility-owned wind projects are considered to have a value equal to their salvage value, with certain limitations. This incentive effectively lowers the property tax base on utility-owned wind turbines from 100% of fair market value to as little as 24.95% of fair market value.* This results in an effective property tax rate on wind turbines that is 24.95% of the effective tax rate on most other types of newly constructed electricity-generating units.

*The law states that up to 79% of the total property may be assigned salvage value. Salvage value of a pollution control facility, of which a wind turbine is considered for assessment purposes, is 5%. Therefore, if 79% of the property is valued at 5% (salvage value), and the remaining 21% of the property is valued at 100%, the effective value for property tax purposes is 24.95%.