Attorney General Swanson sues wind-energy firm for bilking Minnesota farmers

[PoliticAverse]

Farmer Mark Schroeder of Elgin, Minn., knew something was seriously wrong when he heard a noise from his new windmill that sounded like a helicopter landing on the roof of his house.

"You could hear the noise 2 or 3 miles away," he said.

The windmill shook furiously atop its 160-foot tower. Black smoke billowed from the control unit. Schroeder said he tried shutting off the power, but the windmill's three 25-foot-long blades continued spinning furiously. One of the 500-pound blades eventually sheared off and flew about 100 yards into a field, bringing Schroeder's dream of energy independence crashing to earth.

That was last February. Schroeder said the Excelsior company that sold and installed the unit, Renewable Energy SD, promised to replace it but never has, and no longer responds to his calls.

Read the rest at: http://www.startribune.com/business/188368291.html

[2pooped2pop]

1. they are going out and getting farmers to agree to put the

turbines on their property for a pittance of what they will bring in. The energy however is sent out of the county. So the farmers and their neighbors get to look at them and wonder if there is indeed any medical problems caused by them, while the energy is sent in to the rich.

They say that they will bring the area money by lowering it's taxes. Yes, their property taxes will be lowered and all of ours nearby because the value of the property will have decreased.

Now, I am all for wind and solar energy. But I would rather someone offered to finance the farmers own turbine so he can get all of the energy from it and sell off the excess. The way it is happening is that some shithole company will reap all of the benefits while the farmers and country folk will have to put up with the mess left behind. The shithole company will reap any government incentives but they will leave these things to rot in the fields when the fail like this one.


They are duping the country folk with bad agreements.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Alternative Energy has more hucksters in it that used car sales

Its really too bad since it is important to our future.

[Yo_Mama]

3. You're misunderstanding this fraud

The farmers here "bought" their own turbines, usually with loans. The farmer was supposed to reap all the profit from sales of wind energy. But a lot of the turbines are faulty, many have never even been installed, and none of them delivered anything near the monthly energy sales originally claimed.

I would like to state that there have been many reputable wind turbine sellers. The ones I have dealt with were very honest and very careful. This particular company is just scamming, but it is not the only one.

[2pooped2pop]

5. ahhh, I see.

A different situation entirely. It is such a shame that with all of the real possibility to make good money in wind energy, that some still have to scam people. America is looking less and less like the one we grew up thinking we had.

I hope these farmers are able to get justice before these guys just hide the money and file bankruptcy on the whole scamming company.

[Yo_Mama]

4. Mafia into Italian renewables

See, it's not just a problem in the US:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/sting-operations-reveal-mafia-involvement-in-renewable-energy/2013/01/22/67388504-5f39-11e2-9dc9-bca76dd777b8_story.html?tid=obinsite

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming that huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.