Wind power to the people

An update on Danmar & Associates, a small business that helps farmers recognize wind power's potential.

By Mina Kimes, FSB contributor

(FSB Magazine) -- When we profiled DanMar & Associates in June 2003 founder Dan Juhl was helping farmers set up wind towers to generate their own electricity and sell power to utilities.

Since then, multinational giants have come to dominate the industry, but DanMar (danmar.us) hasn't blown away: Annual revenue for the Woodstock, Minn., company has nearly doubled, to $2.5 million.

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To keep wind-power dollars circulating in small communities and create new jobs, Juhl started Community-Based Energy Development (c-bed.org), a nonprofit that helped persuade India-based wind-power company Suzlon (suzlon.com) to build a turbine plant in Pipestone, Minn., which could create as many as 275 jobs.

C-bed also pushed laws in Minnesota and Nebraska that encourage utilities to award energy contracts with immediate payments that help farmers and small businesses profit quickly from wind investments. "We want local business owners to produce their own energy," Juhl says. "We want them to own the power."  Top of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.