Along with potential solar leases, wind development seems to continue to expand, and many mineral owners are also surface owners and therefore own the wind rights. We’re all pretty familiar with how mineral leases typically work (lease bonus up front, percentage of production during life of lease, etc.). But how similar are wind leases?
Some of you may have experience at leasing for wind, so I’d be interested in (a) up front per acre “lease bonus”, (b) damages and offsets for loss of crop acreage, and (3) ongoing rents, royalties, and other payments after development.
Also, what is the common length of term before the lease reverts due to lack of development (as with a mineral lease reverting for lack of drilling). And how long are leases commonly in place before development starts and production commences.
This is a mineral rights forum. Generally, the mineral rights are the dominant right over the surface rights, so allowances for current or later mineral drilling are usually in a wind or solar lease. Not sure you will get much traction on your question here. However, I am attaching a pdf from TAMU that has a chapter on Wind and Solar leasing. You might see if the UT or TAMU system has any wind leases posted on their website. Wind leases tend to be for decades.
I was at the OK NARO convention in May and there was a good talk on solar and wind projects from an OSU professor-Shannon Ferrell in the Department of Agricultural Economics. You might try a search online for similar talks or papers. Your questions were included in what he presented.