ST. CLOUD, Minn. – A $2.3 million federal stimulus project at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud is giving green energy initiatives a bad name.
A 600-kilowatt wind turbine -- some 245 foot tall -- stands on the wintry VA grounds, frozen in time and temperature, essentially inoperable for the past 1 1/2 years. No one is working to fix it, though many attempts were made to repair the turbine, once billed as a model green energy project.
"The St. Cloud VA is a hospital, and our focus is on our patients and we like to think that we treat our veterans very well here," said Barry Venable, a public affairs officer for the VA in St. Cloud. "We're embarrassed that this turbine does not operate as advertised."
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Old equipment gets obsolete real fast.Worse yet when the components to get it operational are no longer manufactured.What if someone has stockpiled the outdated technology,gets it up and running and then has another breakdown in say 2 years? Solar energy has this crap beat 7 ways to Sunday.
ReplyDeleteThe City of Berlin needs to take a second look at this..
ReplyDelete239, this is new in 10 year terms, and deserves repair, but only if it will make electricity. In this article, no one has addressed this point.
ReplyDeleteMy point exactly.