Demolition scenes like the one in Madison County, New York, where a line of spectators watched a row of turbines blasted to rubble, have become too familiar. Those twenty-five-year-old machines once symbolized progress; now they’re deemed obsolete and are reduced to waste in seconds. Around the world, countless early-generation wind farms are reaching the end of their service life, and decommissioning has become the default response.
Mundo Power believes there’s a better way. Rather than demolishing towers and wasting valuable steel, concrete, and grid connections, the company retrofits them with modern vertical axis wind turbines and advanced energy storage systems. Partnering with a New York–based manufacturer of supercapacitor storage cells—technology that can deliver hundreds of thousands of charge–discharge cycles across extreme temperatures—Mundo Power turns liabilities into assets and keeps renewable infrastructure working for decades longer.
The Weight of Decommissioning
The scale of removal is staggering. A single 1 MW horizontal-axis turbine is situated on a base that exceeds 200 cubic meters of concrete, reinforced with more than 100 tons of rebar. Towers rise 50–80 meters and weigh more than 100 metric tons of steel. When demolition begins, all of this is dismantled, hauled away, and often sent to waste. Even the grid connections and substations, which took years to permit and millions to build, are left idle. For local communities, the cost is not only financial but emotional: jobs disappear, land sits empty, and the promise of renewable power vanishes with the towers.
Why Demolition Seems Necessary—And Why It Isn’t
Operators and municipalities argue that decommissioning is the only responsible choice. Old turbines, they say, are inefficient, increasingly unsafe, and impossible to maintain at a reasonable cost. Removing them ensures safety, restores land, and closes the chapter on outdated technology.
But this reasoning is incomplete. Demolition may remove the risk of machinery failing. Yet, it replaces it with new burdens—millions spent on removal, vast amounts of concrete and steel wasted, and renewable infrastructure cut short, long before its supporting systems are due to expire. If safety and productivity are the goals, reusing towers for modern systems accomplishes both without erasing decades of investment.
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A Practical Alternative
Mundo Power has secured a patent for a system that repurposes decommissioned towers by utilizing multiple 6.25 kW vertical-axis wind turbines. Instead of explosives and scrap, existing structures become the foundation for a new generation of distributed renewable energy. The retrofit design allows two approaches.
- Individual mounting brackets fix turbines to specific points along the tower, converting a single idle structure into a steady generator of clean power.
- Mounting ring systems secure several turbines to a ring, which is raised into place using a winch when the blades and generators are removed. The configuration depends on tower height, existing grid infrastructure, and investor parameters.
This isn’t theoretical. The same vertical wind turbine generator already powers remote cell-site solutions where uptime is critical. With a proven track record, durable construction, and minimal maintenance needs, these turbines extend the life of renewable infrastructure without repeating the mistakes of demolition.
To store this energy reliably, Mundo Power pairs its turbines with supercapacitor-based storage modules from its New York partner. These modules have a projected calendar life of more than 40 years and a cycle life measured in hundreds of thousands to over a million full charge–discharge cycles, while operating from –30°C to 80 °C. They overcome the limitations of chemical batteries—there’s no thermal runaway, no capacity degradation, and no sensitivity to fast charge or discharge. By integrating long-life storage with its retrofit towers, Mundo Power delivers continuous, resilient power without the heat sensitivity and wear that plague traditional batteries.
Build on What We Have
The demolition of Madison’s turbines was striking, but it shouldn’t serve as a model for the future. The foundations are already in place. The towers are already tied into the grid. The land is already prepared.
Discarding all of this denies both history and opportunity. By retrofitting retired towers with vertical wind turbines and pairing them with long-life storage, Mundo Power enables the preservation of existing infrastructure and its enhancement. The result is lower cost for operators, new revenue for investors, and continued renewable power for communities.
Don’t Tear It Down—Transform It with Mundo-Power Industrial Wind Turbine
The next generation of wind-farm retirements doesn’t have to end in rubble. Demolition wastes materials, erases infrastructure, and leaves communities behind. Mundo Power’s retrofit system proves there is another path: one that respects past investment while delivering future value. By integrating patented vertical-axis turbines with durable supercapacitor storage, aging wind farms can transition from end-of-life to a second life.
If you manage aging wind assets, ask whether demolition really serves your community—or if a second life is possible. Reach out to Mundo Power to learn how a retrofit solution, combined with long-life storage, can transform end-of-life assets into long-term sources of power. The choice isn’t between demolition and abandonment; it’s between destruction and transformation. Mundo Power has made transformation possible; now it’s up to you to take the next step.