Basin Electric employee's quote highlighted by Bismarck Tribune

group of men in hard hats in front of wind turbine being disassembled
A contractor, Rugged Rock, Inc., of Porter, Minnesota, was hired by Basin Electric to decommission the turbines, which involved bringing them down and then disassembling them. The parts are being either salvaged or disposed of in a landfill.

The decommissioning of Basin Electric's first two wind turbines on Mar. 14 gained a lot of attention.

Local news covered the event in both Bismarck and Minot:

  1. Minot Daily News
  2. The Bismarck Tribune
  3. KMOT-TV
  4. KX News

The Bismarck Tribune runs a weekly feature title "Eminently Quotable." Basin Electric Manager of Distributed Generation Joe Fielder was quoted in the story.

“The turbines are being taken down because they are at the end of their useful life, and parts and service are no longer available. While it is possible to repower wind turbines in many instances, these two cannot be repowered because their foundations are not large enough to support the larger equipment that would be necessary.” -- Joe Fiedler, manager of distributed generation for Basin Electric Power Cooperative, which has taken down two of North Dakota’s oldest wind turbines, south of Minot.
Quoted in The Bismarck Tribune

Patrick Hurt, Basin Electric supervisor of maintenance and operations at Prairiewinds 1, reacted to the turbines falling as well.

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