Purchase Renewable Energy

Enroll in CFU’s Harvest the Wind program to support use of wind energy in Cedar Falls. The program is voluntary and customers may start, stop or change participation levels at any time.

Harvest the Wind participants support 100-kilowatt-hour units of wind energy with a voluntary payment of $2.50 per month per unit. The voluntary payment is automatically added to participants’ electric bills, and may be stopped at any time.

Why support CFU’s use of renewable energy?

To sign up, download, complete and sign the participation form and mail to:

CFU Customer Services
P.O. Box 769
Cedar Falls, IA 50613

CFU’s cost for wind energy today is higher than our cost for coal power. Why? Because dollars spent building coal plants return far more energy than dollars spent building wind turbines. A large coal plant can consistently produce power at 90% of its capacity. Even at the most favorable wind locations in North America with the best turbine technology, energy output averages only 40% of turbine capacity because the wind does not always blow. The economic value of Iowa wind farms is further reduced by the fact that energy output is lowest during the summer, when demand is at its peak and electricity is most expensive.

CFU is adding wind energy because we believe it is a sound investment in light of the environmental benefits and longer-term economics. Over time, we believe the cost of coal generation will rise, a carbon tax will be enacted, and effective energy storage technologies will be developed to make wind plants more productive, reliable and cost competitive.