A problem with being an early adopter is that sometimes you’re left with a product that has been rendered obsolete and out of date by its future iterations. This isn’t a big deal if you have the money to keep upgrading to newer versions, but unfortunately this can’t be said for wind turbine installations. While wind turbines are used as a green alternative source of energy, they aren’t very efficient and usually requires possibly thousands of turbines in order to equate to a single coal-fired plant.
Sometimes progress can be its own worst enemy, with early adopters being stuck with obsolete equipment that leaves them with the choice of living with out-dated technology or an expensive replacement. The green energy field isn’t immune to this, and as part of a US$2 million renewable energy project, GE has developed a way to make smaller, less efficient wind turbines into bigger more efficient ones with a bit of plastic (or carbon composite) surgery. Windmills have been around for over 2,000 years, and have been used for everything from grinding corn to reclaiming much of The Netherlands from the sea. In these days when global warming is such a political hot potato, many governments have seen wind turbines as a clean, green alternative to conventional or nuclear power sources.
