If you've driven into Boone on Hwy 321 in the past couple of years, you may have noticed the small wind turbine at Boone Crane & Rigging. On a windy, drizzly Friday afternoon in late February 2018, two graduate students from the Sustainable Technology program at Appalachian State University successfully repaired the turbine after an extended period of downtime. Passersby will now notice the turbine spinning and they can thank Chris Stevens and Jaden Brown for their handiwork. They can also thank Dink, the crane operate responsible for safely lifting the students to the top of the turbine. With the Skystream turbine back online, the winds blowing through Boone enable on-site generation of clean energy, and resume the work of reducing the power bill at BC&R.
Brent Summerville, Practitioner-in-Residence in Sustainable Technology at Appstate, who led the job, says of the work: "The Department of Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment is contracted by the National Renewable Energy Lab to serve as a Wind Application Center for the national Wind for Schools program. We are responsible for over a dozen turbines of this type at schools across North Carolina. This local repair provided Appstate students some hands-on experience with turbine repair so they can better serve the schools, keeping their wind turbines running."
More info at:
https://wind.appstate.edu/ https://stbe.appstate.edu/about/graduate-program
https://openei.org/wiki/Wind_for_Schools_Portal
Chris Stevens, Technology Grad Student Repairing Turbine
Chris Stevens, Technology Grad Student Repairing Turbine