BELVIDERE — Gary Aksamit hopes that when he meets with local landowners here Thursday evening, he will secure some verbal commitments related to the wind power project he is developing.

“What I need is people to engage me in conversation, them saying, ‘I like it; let’s talk about dollars,’ ” he said. “I need farmers more than anything to say, ‘Yes, I’m interested.’ ”

He’s been working several months on a project that would encompass around 15,000 acres between U.S. Highway 81 and Nebraska Highway 53 in the central part of Thayer County. The plan calls for about 40 turbines, which combined would produce about 80 megawatts of electricity at maximum capacity.

The meeting will be 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Belvidere Community Building.

Aksamit, who grew up in Alexandria, now lives in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, where he is an energy broker. His wife, Laurel, is from Ruskin.

Aksamit, who calls himself a low-pressure salesman, doesn’t have any written commitments with landowners yet. He has about 4,500 acres verbally committed.

“We’re a third there,” he said.

He will be joined at the meeting by a couple wind energy experts who are part of the project.

Among them will be David Bracht, a lawyer with the Omaha firm Husch Blackwell Sanders, who represents other wind entities and has a strong agricultural background. Aksamit has retained him to help with his project.

Also attending will be Phil Pogge of Omaha, chief financial officer for the project.

Pogge worked on the Elkhorn Ridge project in Bloomfield, which Aksamit wrote in a letter to landowners is the largest completed wind facility in Nebraska to date.

“We will collectively explain your legal rights and responsibilities and also explain in detail how the financial structure of this project will pay you and estimates of that dollar figure,” Aksamit wrote. “Included in this will be some discussion on total benefit to the community.”

As compensation for committing their land, project participants can either receive an annual long-term lease payment or be able to receive an equity interest in the project at no cost.

Beyond commitment from participants, Aksamit said the next step in the process is erecting a meteorological tower that will record data about wind and other meteorological variables that would effect the turbines and how much power they would produce. He said the cost to erect that tower will be about $75,000.

“I’m not going to put up a $75,000 tower if I only have two people to say yes,” he said.

After Aksamit receives the readings from his tower, he will create a request for proposal for the project that he will submit to the Nebraska Public Power District.

“The success and failure of that project in Thayer County depends on whether Nebraska Public Power decides to buy the power from us,” he said. “If Nebraska Public Power doesn’t want to buy power from us, we’re done.”

Already, Aksamit said, he’s competing for the time and attention of landowners with a corn harvest that is taking longer than expected.

Aksamit has other projects he’ll be working on during this trip to Nebraska that will last through Nov. 13.

That includes partnering with Geneva to apply for a multi-phase Innovative Advanced Renewable Energy Project Grant.

The Geneva City Council agreed to make the application for the grant, which was made to the federal Department of Energy and the Nebraska Office of Energy, at a special meeting on Oct. 23.

The grant could provide nearly $2 million in grant funds toward the proposed project, which includes a wind-energy system — including at least one large 120-foot Northern 100 kilowatt that could become a focal point on an entrance into Geneva — a solar-energy system and a solar LED street-lighting system. Also included in the plan is a technology center.

Of that $2 million, Geneva would pay 15 percent or about $310,000, which would be funded by a revenue bond issue.

“That is going to be a really big deal,” Aksamit said. “That is going to put Geneva in a situation where it could replace all of it’s (public) electrical needs. ”

Aksamit was approached for the project by John Edgecombe, chairman of the Geneva Sales Tax Loan Committee, after Edgecombe read about what Aksamit is doing in Thayer County.

Edgecombe has gotten many Geneva residents excited about this project, Aksamit said.

“He stuck his neck out there,” Aksamit said. “The success and failure of these projects depends on finding one person who is willing to champion the cause.”

He said after he announced his intention to create a wind farm in Thayer County, early in 2009, his phone “rang off the wall” with people across Nebraska interested in other wind projects.

He also has meetings scheduled in the eastern part of the state with the organizers of different construction projects involving new schools and nonprofit organization that want to integrate technology into the buildings.

“My sleepy little earthworm has turned into a race car in 18 months’ time,” he said of his desire to increase the amount of renewable energy projects in Nebraska.