USA - Military base gets final piece for wind turbine

The final section of a wind turbine tower arrived at the Massachusetts Military Reservation recently, after a nearly three-week delay. The turbine piece, the middle section of the tower, was transported from New York to the Cape, crossing the Bourne Bridge this week. It had been delayed while officials mapped out a safe route to the Cape. "Finally," Rose Forbes, who spearheaded the turbine project for the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, said as she watched the tower piece on the home stretch of its extended journey.

The 1.5-megawatt turbine is being built on a former base landfill. In the coming days, the section will be added to the turbine base, which is already in the ground. The other pieces, which are sprawled on the ground surrounding the tower site, will be hoisted skyward by a massive crane that can be seen poking through the trees from Route 28 in Falmouth. Once the tower is erected, it will take just about a week for the turbine to start generating electricity, Forbes said.

When it's operational, the 389-foot turbine is expected to generate about 30 percent of the electricity needed to power the Air Force's water treatment facilities, which costs $2.2 million annually. The $4.6 million turbine is expected to pay for itself in seven years, Forbes said.

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net