The State - News from Dec. 5, 1988

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. workers dynamited a $13-million, 20-story windmill after a six-year experiment in the Solano County community of Cordelia showed that its turbines weren’t practical to generate wind energy, a company spokeswoman said. Alison Silverstein said the big blade that became a landscape fixture for drivers along Interstate 80 rarely moved. The project was plagued by operational problems, she said. “It needed a lot of tweaking. You never knew what kind of glitch would happen.” PG&E; learned during its experiment that smaller windmills, such as the thousands that dot the Altamont Pass east of Livermore, are more efficient than the large ones. The Solano County windmill torn down was one of five built by Boeing Aerospace. It was the last of the five to come down.