Falling Wind Turbine Blades: An ‘Unusual and Rare’ Event That Seems to Happen a Lot
Exactly how many turbine blades have gone AWOL remains an industry secret.
Despite six truckloads of debris (so far) from the 70-ton Vineyard Wind turbine blade that fell apart on July 13 being carted away, pieces of fiberglass, foam, and plastic continue to be spotted floating and still washing up on Massachusetts beaches. Meanwhile, GE, the company that manufactured the blade is sticking to its story that such incidents are “highly unusual and rare.”
According to a July 22 Town of Nantucket “turbine blade crisis” update, new debris arrived on south shore beaches, with a “helicopter search happening this morning for a larger piece last seen near Madequecham Beach…” A large section of the blade that “fell into the ocean” on July 18 was spotted but not retrieved yet, with 50 percent of the remaining blade “hanging down.”
It’s obvious that this situation is far from finished, or even remotely contained.
As to previous blade failures, despite GE and Vineyard Wind hemming and hawing on the question of prior incidents during a Nantucket select board meeting July 17 attended by GE officials and Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moller, it turns out not to be an isolated event either on land or sea.
Flying Blades
As reported by The Oregonian, in February of 2022 at Portland’s Biglow Canyon onshore wind farm, one of the turbine’s blades “launched into the night.
“No one saw it. No one heard it. But it was evidently a violent affair.
“The skinny blade, as tall as an 11-story building and weighing more than four Toyota Camrys, soared the full length of a football field. It plowed a furrow 4-feet deep in the wheat stubble where it eventually landed.”
In April of 2022 Orsted requested “no sail zones” that spanned three countries when both the rotor and blades were dispatched from its turbine at its Anholt wind area in Denmark. The “safety” zone included areas that used the same Siemens Gamesa turbines in the UK, Germany and Denmark.
In December of 2023 all three blades were torn off a turbine in Ayrshire, Scotland during a storm. The Daily Mail described it as “…the blades suddenly (coming) loose and flung across a seemingly deserted field in opposite directions.”
In 2023 at the Alfstedt-Ebersdorf wind area in Lower Saxony Germany they were still actively cleaning up from one fallen turbine blade the previous October, when another “snapped.”
During January of 2024 a blade fell from the North Findlay (Ohio) Wind Campus. The CEO of developer One Energy said that he has “never seen a blade fail like this in his 20 years in the industry.”
In May of 2024 at the Dogger Bank turbine area off the UK coast a GE Vernova blade (the same make as used in Vineyard Wind), also broke.
Statistically speaking, the company GCube, which describes itself as “renewable energy insurance experts” hasn’t provided any data on turbine blade failures since 2014. At that time, they reported 700,000 blades in operation with a failure rate of 3,800 incidents a year.
Where updated data may be hiding was asked in a 2023 report titled The Toxic Wings. (PDF link posted below). This is due in part, the authors said, to “the fact that the wind turbine industry guarantees confidentiality to its buyers and users.
“We know of no other industry that (has) been allowed such ‘Wild West’ conditions ever,” the report noted in describing wind energy as an “unproven technology…without a scientific basis for the overall scope of consequences” to our health, safety and to the environment.
Reminds me of the medical mantra "Safe and Effective". #BigWind and #BigPharma operate pretty much the same.
How many more man made disasters around “clean, renewable energy” need to occur before the populace recognizes the GLARING IRONY that none if it is clean, sustainable or renewable; most of the juice is not worth the squeeze (except to China and the hand picked entities that benefit directly) and the whole thing is just another bureaucratic scam on We The People Of Earth to restrict and endanger our lives making us poorer, making energy less reliable while “they” get rich laundering government subsidies? Am I being a tad hyperbolic? Do I sound old and crazy? I’m only 58! It has become a tendency of mine these days in this perpetually maddening world of the media and corporate B🐂 S onslaught. When did we all lose our minds??
Thanks again for another informative read. 👏🏻