Massachusetts Wind Turbines Out of Warranty

Massachusetts

Commercial megawatt turbines coming out of warranty.

Consumers,state, town and city officials need to be alert to the failure of federal, state and local officials to do "Due Diligence" on the installations of gear box driven commercial wind turbines in Massachusetts and Rhode Island since 2009. They are coming out of warranty and price to be paid looks high.

The first thing Rhode Island officials said was: "We didn't have a crystal ball how could we have known."

Well everybody know it now !

One of the first wind turbines installed was the Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC) on the Massachusetts Military Reservation. The Fuhrländer 1.5 gear driven megawatt turbine went up in 2009. The turbine has a failing gear box in which the military denies but has purchased a second gear box and has the parts on site just in case of a failure. The turbine has been plagued by mechanical problems and poor service from the manufacturer. The turbine is located near Rte 28 and Rte 151. Bankruptcy is an issue.

The Town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island built a gear driven turbine at their high school and spent over 3 million dollars for the megawatt gear box driven wind turbine. The gear box failed just after two years of operation and remains broken today. This turbine may have additional problems with unbalanced blades that could cost an additional one million dollars to repair.The wind company went bankrupt.  Blade inspection is required when changing gear boxes every three to five years. The Portsmouth gear box investigation is available here : http://docs.wind-watch.org/Portsmouth_RI_Turbine_Gearbox.pdf

Next the Town of Princeton, Massachusetts built two gear box driven commercial wind turbines. One of the turbines suffered a catastrophic failure costing over $600,000.00 to repair. The special heavy duty crane costs $150,000.00 for just three days to do the lifting and weeks to set up. Princeton, Massachusetts pays the highest electric rates in New England.

The Towns of Fairhaven, Scituate and Charlestown have Sinovel Chinese made gear box driven turbines coming out of warranty in the next few months. Sinovel wind company has been placed on the Chinese watch list for failing stocks. The warranties are no good if the companies go bankrupt,

The commercial wind turbine industry has been hiding the dirty little secret of gear box failures for years.In fact the wind industry no longer builds gear driven turbines and has switched to direct drive turbines as a result of all the failures.

Vestas Wind Company bought out a company called Neg Micron that built NM-82 megawatt turbines that went out of business because of massive gear box failures. Falmouth has three gear driven Vestas V-82 commercial wind turbines were derived from the older gear driven wind turbine company. Again gear driven turbines.