GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – Four new windmill towers and turbines rising from the crown of John Paul Jones Hill will begin powering the U.S. Navy base here in February, saving $1.5 million in annual oil imports, reducing pollution and showing energy-starved communist neighbors what they are missing.
The wind-generation project that will provide 25 percent to 30 percent of the base’s energy needs is a rare embrace of renewable resources for the U.S. military, which can seldom justify the high start-up costs or efficiently extend new technologies to the small, scattered communities they serve.
At Guantanamo, where the population has grown fourfold since the base began housing hundreds of suspected enemy combatants captured mostly in Afghanistan, favorable winds and Pentagon-mandated energy independence have converged to allow the base to boast the largest stand-alone hybrid wind and diesel power system in the world, according to its developers.
Two of the four windmills, each capable of generating 950 kilowatts of electricity, are operational, and the other two will be online by the end of the month, said the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Mark Leighton, who is overseeing the project.
Augmenting the wind power are two new diesel generators that operate more efficiently and cleanly than the Cold War-era units they are replacing, which will boost annual fuel savings to $2.3 million once all the new technology is activated in the next few weeks, Leighton said. The equipment also will cut carbon dioxide output by 13 million pounds a year.
Cuba has suffered widespread and protracted electricity outages in recent years as the price of oil has driven up production costs. The country has invested little in alternative energy resources.
Whether the Navy and its neighbor might collaborate in wind-power production if more amicable relations are achieved is “difficult to predict,” a base spokesman said.
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