Grand Meadow turbine blades start to leave

Relief for a beleaguered southern Minnesota community, as a field of abandoned wind turbine blades begins to depart.

I’ve written several times about the saga of the 100-or-so used wind turbine blades that were abandoned years ago in a farm field outside of town.

It took an order of the state Public Utilities Commission to end the finger pointing and buck passing between the wind farm developer, NextEra, and the local electric utility, Xcel Energy.

KAAL-TV (ABC 6) reports,

After years of waiting and wondering what was going to happen to the pile of wind turbine blades left in a pile on the edge of town, the city of Grand Meadow is finally getting cleaned up as work crews haul the blades out of town.

The ultimate destination for the blades was unclear, but presumably out of Minnesota. The Minnesota Star Tribune reports,

It’s unclear where the blades are headed from here. NextEra told the PUC it would move them to a more suitable storage site in Kansas or a recycling facility in Missouri. But the company didn’t answer questions this week, and KAAL TV in Rochester reported the infrastructure was headed to an Iowa recycler.

Baby steps.