Wind turbine company coming to Elgin

Proven Energy has officially chosen Elgin as the site for its North American headquarters. The Scottish small wind turbine company signed a lease in Elgin Corporate Center on Big Timber Road at the beginning of June, according to Susanne Sharuga, Proven’s general manager for North America.

The company now has office and warehouse space in a 6,200-square-foot facility. Sharuga said two employees already have been hired and there will be a need for about a dozen more in the first phase of the company’s business plan.

Proven will start with sales and marketing employees in the Elgin facility. After a few years, the goal is to start assembling the small wind turbines and later shift to manufacturing the entire product in Elgin.

Right now, it’s just the beginning.

“We are in the process of turning chaos into what may look orderly,” Sharuga said. “We’re getting furniture and connecting phones.”

Elgin city staff members are still negotiating an economic incentive agreement with Proven Energy. The agreement in its final form, as well as a wind turbine ordinance, will come before the city council at the end of the month.

The incentive agreement for Sears Holdings Corp., also discussed by council members after the company already had signed a lease, was debated heavily by the council in May and June.

Council member John Prigge opposed giving incentives to Sears in that context because he said he was concerned the city was “overselling” itself.

“It sounds like we made the sale,” he said at a June council meeting.

Prigge was the only member of the seven-person council to vote against the agreement at each meeting in which it was discussed. He declined to comment on the Proven agreement before seeing it in its finished form.