Kathy Draeger is the Statewide Director of University of Minnesota Extension’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships (RSDP), and she also serves on the board of the Agralite Electric Cooperative. In 2009 she installed a wind turbine on her farm in Big Stone County that is grid connected provides all the net energy needed on the farm. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the background of your farm?   

Kathy: We’ve got a 340 acres farm, about half of that we put into perennial paddocks for our grass-fed beef. Until recently, a portion of land on our farm was certified organic row crops including edible dry beans and human-grade small grains. We converted 30 acres of land that was continually flooding into a wetland with a prairie upland and put it into a perpetual easement. I used the money that we were paid for the perpetual easement to buy our wind turbine.   

Can you share more about the wind turbine and renewable energy system on your farm?  

Kathy: We have a small 10 kW farm-scale Bergey wind turbine that we installed in 2009 on our farm. Our prime motivation for installing the turbine was to support environmental health, and I love that we have our turbine. It has been a workhorse that provides 100% of the power for our farm, plus we sell some back to the grid. It’s a very good farm-scale model that I wish could be replicated on other farms. To install our turbine, we took advantage of an Obama era tax credit, and we were lucky that we had two local installers to get bids from.  

In addition to our wind turbine, we also heat our home with a wood boiler. When we bought our farm in 2008 it had a 100 year-old grove that had reached maturity, so we had over 100 standing dead trees on our farm. We purchased the wood boiler and over the course of about 10 years we replanted the grove and slowly burned all the standing dead wood for energy, so we used no fossil fuels at all to heat our home and our farm. I don’t know that everyone would count that as renewable energy, but as far as I’m concerned being able to use standing dead wood, which would off-gas all its CO2 regardless, as a substitute for delivered propane was a win-win for our farm. We continue to use the wood boiler now, but instead of using our own wood we use waste wood from the local tree cutting service. Those are the two renewable energy sources on our farm. As a reminder, I try to conserve energy because the cleanest kilowatt is the kilowatt you don’t use.

Would you encourage other farmers in your area to install a wind turbine on their farm based on your experience?

Kathy: I love the footprint of my Burgey turbine and that it powers our farm completely, so I’m glad I made the decision to install it. I have not personally looked into prices lately, but it certainly is a good option for many farmers to consider. Having your own renewable energy system helps you feel personally empowered to make a difference in environmental health.

I will also say that we’ve had no issues with the turbine itself being able to supply energy, but in 2025 we did have to invest quite a bit to fix some damage on the turbine caused by a hail storm in 2021. Since it is so far off the ground we didn’t see the damage on the blades right away, but it was caught during a routine maintenance check. Luckily, there’s a renewable energy company right outside Morris that was able to work with our turbine manufacturer to supply and install new blades and parts for some of the internal mechanisms that had wear and tear. There was a few years between when the damage occurred and when we got it repaired, so it wasn’t eligible to be covered with insurance, which was not ideal.   

Because of the cost of repairs, combined with the initial price to install, we will break even on energy costs but not get any significant return on investment from the turbine since we’re not huge energy consumers and the payments we receive for extra energy we sell back to the grid is relatively small.  

Is renewable energy becoming more widely adopted in your county or community?

Kathy: There has been an increase in brokers in Big Stone County that are purchasing wind rights from landowners. On our farm, we get multiple contacts to sell the wind rights on our land so that developers can install industrial scale wind energy. My hope would be that there could be more distributed wind turbines, like ours, throughout the landscape. I believe that would provide a more resilient and local energy source.

What is your perspective on batteries for renewable energy storage? Do you have any experience using batteries to store energy from your wind turbine?  

Kathy: I am on the board of my rural energy cooperative, Agralite, and they are currently testing member-owned renewable energy battery storage as a load control solution. Each month our coop manages peak times of energy usage. Agralite is a national leader in load control, because we have hundreds of members who have purchased propane generators from us that they use on their farms. We can switch on all those hundreds of generators, and they feed power into the grid and reduce energy demands at times of peak usage or shortages in generation capacity. I’m excited that Agralite is testing member-owned batteries that could connect to the grid and allow for flexibility and a cleaner energy solution during load control. However, I have concerns about how much fossil fuel energy is embedded in the batteries, and that mining for rare earth minerals is needed to create batteries, so I hope the technology continues to advance.  

Do you see any potential for battery storage to improve energy efficiency or meet the state’s clean energy goals?

Kathy: In terms of Minnesota meeting our clean energy goals, I wish every single farm was able to have a farm scale wind turbine, say 10kw like ours, up to 40kw, to produce their own energy and provide distributed renewable energy system on their land connected to the grid. Distributed renewable energy provides more resilience than fossil fuels, so in my opinion the ideal scenario is every farm being able to have that. Once battery technology advances, that could be part of the solution too.

What is your perspective on community-owned models, such as cooperative businesses, for renewable energy? Do you feel like there’s a future for that in Minnesota?   

Kathy: Minnesota is a global leader in cooperative businesses per capita, and I personally am very engaged with cooperatives. I serve on the board for Agralite, my local energy cooperative, and utilize cooperatives for propane, seeds, agriculture supplies, and telecommunications. Additionally, my program at the University of Minnesota, Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships, was a major sponsor of the first ever Minnesota Cooperative Summit last year. We’re lucky to have so many cooperatives across Minnesota.

Needless to say, I’m strongly in support of cooperatives. Farmers in particular are already comfortable with cooperatives and have been engaged with them for over a century. Cooperative businesses empower members to own the resources and capital and make decisions together, whether it’s a cooperative grain elevator for storage and marketing, or other businesses. Members of cooperatives do not have to wait for a private entity or be held liable to shareholders, and profits made from the business are returned to the people engaged in the work of the cooperative.  

Given that eighty-five percent of Minnesota’s geography, or nearly every farm in the state, is already electrified by rural electric cooperative businesses, I think a future for cooperatively owned renewable energy systems is possible in Minnesota. Rural electric cooperatives already have electricians on staff and are the ones who install energy distribution infrastructure across the state. It’s worth exploring how this existing infrastructure can be used with distributed renewable energy, and how community-owned models could be incorporated to level the playing field for people interested in owning renewable energy.

To learn more about the renewable energy on Kathy Draeger’s farm, watch this video.

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Minnesota Farmers Union Foundation develops stories about farmers’ and rural residents’ experiences with renewable energy across the state. Click here to read more articles in this series.