March 28, 2024

A Huge Flash of Blue

http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/2734

 

“I saw a huge flash of blue out on the side of the hill where the windmills were. It started in the middle and spread out in all directions.  It lit up the whole hillside the white-out of a snowstorm.”–Ken Daubach, ex-firefighter, who witnessed the power go down

 

By Miriam Raftery

February 10, 2010 (Campo) – Battered by a winter storm on December 7, all 25 wind turbines at the Kumeyaay Wind project on the Campo Indian Reservation shut down—and haven’t come back on line two months later.

At a January 28 public scoping meeting, Boulevard Planning Group Chair Donna Tisdale asked the California Public Utilities Commission and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to conduct a formal public health and safety investigation.  The wind project was developed by Pattern Energy.

Donna Tisdale“All 75 blades from all 25 turbines were removed and only some of the FAA required lights are working,” Tisdale wrote. “There is speculation that the high winds flowing across the composite blades created an electrostatic discharge that then arced between turbines damaging the blades and the electrical system.”

 

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