August 5, 2011
Pennsylvania

DEP revokes contractor’s clean energy approval

pittsburgh.cbslocal.com 5 August 2011

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Last year, Doug Caldwell paid $15,000 for a wind turbine to supply electrical power to his home, but today, all he has to show for it is a concrete pad and cement cylinder.

The contractor, Joe Larkin – the owner of a company called Tri-State Electricity – has disappeared leaving Caldwell in the lurch.

But Caldwell isn’t alone as a dozen other customers are in similar straights; customers who shelled out close a half million dollars to Larkin for unfinished green energy systems.

Debbie Cowden says she spent $23,000 for solar panels that don’t work.

Perhaps too little too late, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has sent a letter to Larkin that revokes his state approval as a clean energy contractor.

In another letter to his customers, the DEP is offering them grants to complete the projects.

Efforts by KDKA Investigator Andy Sheehan to locate Larkin at his home and at his office came up short. But in their letter to the homeowners, the DEP urges his customers to file a complaint with the state attorney general.

“I would like see him be charged with some criminal charges so he has to own up to what he’s done, to myself and the other homeowners,” said Cowden. “I just think it’s disgraceful.

There is no word from the Attorney General’s Office as to whether it’s actually opened an investigation into Larkin, but the people he contracted with are determined that he not do business in Pennsylvania again.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/08/05/dep-revokes-contractors-clean-energy-approval/