Luderitz Wind Power Gets A Burst of Fresh Air

Lüderitz Wind Power (LWP) has just received news that its two 1k/W wind turbines will be replaced. The turbines, one of which is located at Lüderitz Secondary School and the other at the Regional Council buildings, both blew down in mid-October of last year during a period of particularly high wind speeds. Closer inspection of the damaged turbines revealed that the weak material that the turbine blades were made of has been snapped in two.

Dismayed, The LWP team, lead by Project Coordinator Ndako Mukapuli, applied to Kestrel Wind Turbines, their supplier, for two replacement turbines but their request was denied following a dispute between Kestral Wind Turbines and Asca Investments, the company that initially installed the turbines. Luckily after several months, Kestrel agreed to provide LWP with two new, improved turbines which are made from a stronger material. The project is currently awaiting the arrival of the two new turbines to Lüderitz when they will promptly be reinstalled.

In October last year The Buchter News published an article detailing the amount of money that LWP had received from the UN’s Development Project and its predicted spending costs. The Buchter News has now learned that LWP did not have direct access to the grant and instead applied for money by providing invoices for any equipment needed. The money, a vast N$380 000, was spent, not only on the two wind turbines, which cost N$166 000 together, but also on planning costs, office equipment, workshops, training and so on. The Buchter News would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to members of LWP from the printing of the above article in the October 2008 edition of the paper.

Lüderitz Wind Power currently has N$40 000 left from the project grant and plans to spend the money on an informative fun day based at the Waterfront, later this year.