The Windustry Board of Directors along with a Peer Group of Community Wind Colleagues is pleased to present the Community Wind Innovator Award. This award is presented annually to an individual who has made significant progress over the past one to two years in forging ahead with new policies, new approaches, new business models or new research to further community and distributed wind energy. This person's ideas and efforts have changed how we think about or perform our work.

The Windustry Board of Directors along with a Peer Group of Community Wind Colleagues is pleased to present the Community Wind Innovator Award. This award is presented annually to an individual who has made significant progress over the past one to two years in forging ahead with new policies, new approaches, new business models or new research to further community and distributed wind energy. This person's ideas and efforts have changed how we think about or perform our work.

The recipient of this award:

        • has creative vision about implementing community and distributed wind;

        • is immensely generous in sharing his/her time for the promotion of community and distributed wind;

        • is a person of great heart. 

 This is the fifth year presenting this annual award. The 2015 awardee for the Community Wind Innovator Award is Randy Caviness.

Randy Caviness, an Iowa farmer and community wind farmer who has built 14.4 MW of commercial scale wind energy in 8 separate projects. Working with over 180 investors in the local community, Randy has developed a trusted methodology for providing clean, local power to municipal and rural electric utilities in southwestern Iowa.

Randy has been farming for 30 years and trying new things for many of them. When the 1985 farm bill mandated conservation practices, Caviness purchased a planter for no-till, but didn’t think it would work. After 10 years, tests showed that the organic matter in his soil was increasing, and is ongoing.