Guantanamo Gets Greener With Wind Power Project

The wind-generation project that will provide 25% to 30% of the base's energy needs is a rare embrace of renewable resources for the U.S. military, which can seldom justify the high start-up costs or efficiently extend new technologies to the small, scattered communities they serve.

At Guantanamo, where the population has grown fourfold since the base began housing hundreds of suspected enemy combatants captured mostly in Afghanistan, favorable winds and Pentagon-mandated energy independence have converged to allow the base to boast the largest stand-alone hybrid wind and diesel power system in the world, according to its developers.

Two of the four windmills, each capable of generating 950 kilowatts of electricity, are operational, and the other two will be online by the end of the month, said the Naval Facilities Engineering Command's Mark Leighton, who is overseeing the project.

Augmenting the wind power are two new diesel generators that operate more efficiently and cleanly than the Cold War-era units they are replacing, which will boost annual fuel savings to $2.3 million once all the new technology is activated in the next few weeks, Leighton said. The equipment also will cut carbon dioxide output at these pristine southern shores by 13 million pounds a year.

Though the wind project boasts economic and environmental advances, those behind it concede there is little likelihood of expansion, here or at other military bases.

Guantanamo is unique in its need to remain separate from its communist-ruled host and neighbor, and the narrow hilltop where the four stanchions are planted cannot accommodate more. The pillars standing 185 feet above the hilltop are embedded 35 feet into the ground, each tethered below the surface with 22 "soil nails." Other high land on the windward side of the base divided by Guantanamo Bay might be suitable, but the cost would be prohibitive compared with the benefit, Leighton said.