You would be surprised to discover the amount of problems that are generated by missing, uncomplete or wrongly defined land lease and site access agreement.

Land lease contracts must be negotiated by the project company (that is, the developer of the wind farm) with the landowners.

It’s extremely rare to have the whole wind farm built on the land of a single owner. Usually, wind farms are built in agricultural areas – therefore these contacts must be negotiated with several counterparts.

The most usual problem connected with such contracts are:

• Incomplete land acquisition. I’ve frequently seen layout changes at the very last minute because the project company couldn’t close one (or more) leasing agreement. The consequence is that roads, crane pads and/or wind turbines have to be repositioned.
• Wrongly defined land occupation. A classic situation – it could happen for instance that the developer has a contract granting few meter of width to build a road. The problem is that to build a 5 meters wide road, you will need much more space to move with construction equipment, to store materials, to have space for embankment, etc.
• Right of way wrongly defined. This is a classic as well – developers are sometime not aware of the amount of space needed to move the blades. This might force you to touch wall, trees or other properties not included in the agreement.
• Social conflicts due to different payment terms. In some situations, a conflict may occur if neighbors are getting paid different amount of money for the same land lease agreement. Correct strategy here is to offer a fixed sum to all.
• “Aerial” rights. I’m not sure about the terminology. However, I’ve worked on a project where, when the WTG was orientated in a certain way, the blades were rotating over a land plot without a land lease. Guess what? Yes, we had to move the turbine.