April 19, 2011
Ohio

Second area wind turbine takes a tumble

www.wytv.com 18 April 2011www.wytv.com 18 April 2011

“When I got up in the morning this was lying here,” Chuck Little of Deerfield said.

Little was talking about the wind turbine on his property.

As the wind howled, Little and his wife heard the turbine fall Sunday just after midnight, but thought it was siding on their house. When they woke up in the morning they saw the top of the turbine lying on the ground next to the tower.

Little said the winds Saturday night shouldn’t have been strong enough to cause any damage.

“It should be good up to 125 mph winds. So, there was something wrong with the tower when it went over,” he said.

Inspectors will be out Tuesday afternoon to determine an official cause. Little believes a crack in the metal 120 feet in the air, mixed with the high winds caused the crash and $30,000 dollars in damage.

“I think it was some structural malfunction in the tower and maybe some metal problems or something that made it go over,” Little said. “It had been cracking it looks like for quite a while and then it finally went off.”

Little installed the turbine and some solar panels two years ago. It supplies electricity to his house. When it makes more power than they use, the electric company sends it to other houses.

“It’s really good this time of year and in winter when we have high winds,” Little said. “The solar panels come into play in the summer time when we have a lot of sun but not so much wind.”

No one was hurt when the tower fell over. Little wants to rebuild the turbine. He said it will eventually pay for itself. But there’s more benefit that just savings.

“The novelty of it. The savings of it eventually. I imagine my children will eventually get the most use out of it,” he said.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/04/19/second-area-wind-turbine-takes-a-tumble/