Powerful Wind Storm Damages Wind Turbine

(Pavilion, NY, December 4, 2006) - - Recent gusts were powerful enough to break off the blades of a wind turbine in Genesee County. News 4's Al Vaughters reports the property owner is still picking up the pieces in Pavilion.

Steve Rigoni said, "Well, the blade has got to come from Minnesota, so it'll be four or five days before they get here."

This is all that's left of Steve Rigoni's wind turbine: three busted-up fiberglass blades and a 140-foot tower.

The turbine has been blowing away Steve's electric bills, but Friday's wind storm was just too much.

Rigoni said, "They were scattered around a little bit. One in this field, and two of them over in the the other field. They didn't go too terribly far."

So just how hard was the wind blowing Friday night? Steve has a weather station built onto his turbine that recorded a peak gust of 89 miles an hour -- hurricane strength.

Rigoni: And we had some sustained winds of 89 miles an hour...

Vaughters: That's sustained winds...

Rigoni: Sustained. Not gusts, sustained; for probably 10 to 20 minutes.

Steve told us a backyard wind turbine does require a substantial investment, but it should pay for itself in about 15 years, if they can get it fixed.

Rigoni said, "You know, all manufacturers, if you have a problem with it, if they have a defect, they have to replace them. So, it's no real big problem, other than my windmill's down for a little while."

Steve and his wife have been running their house on wind power since March, converting all their appliances to electricity. The turbine is wired into the local electric grid and their home through an inverter.

Rigoni said, "And when the windmill is producing big-time, it turns the meter backwards, and the power goes back onto the grid, and when there isn't any wind blowing, the meter turns forward, and I use [power] off the grid."

Officials told us that those residential wind turbines are supposed to withstand winds up to 90 miles an hour, and speculated that Steve Rigoni's turbine blades might have had some kind of manufacturing defect.

In any case, they come with a warranty, and Steve's replacement blades were shipped out Monday.

Industrial turbines are designed to disengage in high winds, and spin freely without turning a generator, reducing the chances of damage.