Northeast Gardening: Money Matters - Part 13, 1 by darius

darius wrote:
In 1979, they installed the (then) world's largest windmill on Howard's Knob in Boone, NC, with blades scanning 200' tip to tip. The $6.2 million, ten-story, 350-ton, 2 MW was built by General Electric. It was dismantled in 1983 following complaints about the noise from residents. The windmill was also very expensive to operate. It was considered evidence that renewable energy was clumsy and unworkable. http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/envhist/RenHist/4.Wind.html

I moved to Boone several months after it was installed, and always heard complaints from the locals of noise and TV interference.

By the way, a woman who is a long-time DG member (sugarweed) worked on that installation. What looks like the box for the controls for the windmill was the size of a house trailer.

In the early 1980s wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants at excellent sites are generating electricity at less than 5 cents/kWh. (American American Wind Energy Association). Costs are continuing to decline as more and larger plants are built and advanced technology is introduced.