California Startup Turns Old Wind Turbines Into Gold

The sprawling hills of California's Altamont Pass are covered in thousands of wind turbines nearly three decades old. But many of those aging models are coming down as wind developers replace them with a smaller number of giant, more powerful turbines.

For Rick Koebbe, the switch spells opportunity.

Koebbe, president of PowerWorks, runs a sort of wind-turbine hospital from a manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. The firm takes old, 100-kilowatt models that would otherwise head to the scrap yard and replaces their well-worn screws, gears, bearings and generators with gleaming new parts. The steel towers and blades are generally still in good shape, so they stay put. Koebbe said his second-hand turbines are an attractive bargain—they sell for as little as half the price of a fresh-off-the-assembly-line model.

"There are very few people doing this," he said.

PowerWorks is part of a niche global market that is emerging for used turbines. While earlier attempts by U.S. companies to sell the models at home have waned, demand appears to be picking up in developing countries and island nations—places where wind power costs far less than electricity from imported fossil fuels, but where ponying up millions of dollars for today's massive wind turbines doesn't make sense.

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