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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
The Bartlett's Farm windmill, now idle with both blades removed, has been out of operation since one of the blades broke in half in moderate winds back in January. Bartlett's Farm filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the turbine last week. |
By Jason Graziadei
I&M Senior Writer
With its new 100-foot-tall windmill still broken and idle, Bartlett’s Ocean View Farm has sued its manufacturer and the company which installed the turbine in Nantucket Superior Court, seeking $1.5 million in damages.
One of the windmill’s 40-foot-long blades broke in half in moderate winds some time after dark Jan. 18, the broken piece plummeting to the ground where it landed nearly 175 feet away from the turbine. No one was hurt in the nighttime incident, but Bartlett’s Farm now alleges that the manufacturer of the windmill, Wind Energy Solutions (WES), of the Netherlands, knew of a design defect in the turbine model, and intentionally concealed the possible danger by negligently misrepresenting its product.
Citing a similar incident at the University of Sheffield in England, where the same model WES turbine sustained a broken blade on two separate occasions in 2008, Bartlett’s Farm claims in the lawsuit that the school’s representative had urged the company to stop selling and operating the turbines until it had conducted an investigation to determine the problem.
The WES windmill at Bartlett’s Farm became operational in March 2009, and over the next 10 months, provided the farm with roughly 80 percent of its electrical power, according to the lawsuit, and “also supplied electrical power to the local grid for which (Bartlett’s Farm) earned profits.” John Bartlett, who is heading up the farm’s alternative-energy efforts, had expected the windmill to pay for itself after four to five years. The $1 million price tag was lessened by a $260,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture and a $425,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technical Collaborative.
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