A preliminary analysis of the failed Vineyard wind turbine found that while the fundamental design of the machine’s 351-foot blades is sound, a manufacturing defect caused one of them to break while passing over the Atlantic Ocean turned.
The July 13 accident, which prompted federal authorities to shut down the entire wind farm, littered the beaches of Nantucket, Massachusetts with foam and fiberglass. GE Vernova, which makes the Haliade-X turbines, said on Wednesday its tests revealed insufficient bonding was applied to the blade at its factory in Gaspe, Canada. Reuters reports. The company said its quality assurance program should have caught the problem, and it will inspect each of the 150 blades the facility produced.
“We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward,” a company representative told Reuters. GE stressed that its investigation has so far found no reason to doubt the integrity of the design, noting that “there is no indication of an engineering design flaw in the blade.”
The blade failed on July 13 while undergoing post-installation testing and commissioning, sending debris flying into the Atlantic Ocean. About 300 feet of what’s left hangs from a few strands of fiberglass next to the tower, which stands about 450 feet above the water, but when the blade points straight up, the overall height reaches about 853 feet. Most of it fell into the sea five days later; waiting vessels repaired what they could despite weather conditions that created what Vineyard Wind called “a difficult operating environment.”
By then, however, foam and fiberglass had long since reached the coast of Nantucket, about 15 miles away, angering local residents and providing ammunition to opponents of wind power. Residents expressed concern about PFAS pollution, plastic pollution and the impact of the accident on the local environment and economy. Although Vineyard Wind has maintained that the material is non-toxic and so far there have been no reports of the accident killing, injuring or otherwise harming marine life, fiberglass can cause skin irritation.
While the manufacturing oversight that led to the failure is unfortunate, it is one of the most likely points of failure in the life cycle of an offshore turbine, Grant Goodrich, the executive director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute, told Grist. Problems stemming from installation are vanishingly rare, he said, and because the blade that failed was new, that meant a manufacturing defect or damage to the blade in transit were the biggest areas of concern.
Still, failures of any kind are rare, though not unheard of. A turbine blade at the Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom failed earlier this year. It was the same model used by Vineyard Wind, but GE Vernova told Reuters the two incidents are unrelated and his investigation into what happened 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket is ongoing.
“Our investigation is ongoing, and we are working with urgency to investigate our blade manufacturing and quality assurance program regarding offshore wind,” the company said in a statement. according to the Boston Herald. “We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward.”
Ultimately, however, it may be quicker and easier to address the problem and clean up the mess the accident caused than to address the damage it did to the public perception of wind. Critics of renewable energy seized the opportunity to denounce wind farms and link the failure of the turbine to congressional Democrats allowing a reform bill that promotes renewable energy.
Yet proponents of wind and other forms of clean energy quickly noted that it is much safer than fossil fuel production and does not cause leaks, spills or explosions. The industry’s safety record is widely known in Europe and China, where the industry is relatively mature and most of the world’s offshore farms is located. Goodrich noted that projects around the world ordered 20,000 utility turbines last year, but there were only a handful of accidents or failures.
Vineyard Wind is one of the country’s first large offshore wind farms. The sprawling complex of 62 turbines, which will one day produce 862 megawatts, was in the earliest stages of operation. Just 10 turned when the blade broke and the Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement shut them down. There’s no word yet on when power generation will resume, though clean energy advocates have vowed to ensure it will — in Nantucket and beyond.
“Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely affect the rise of offshore wind as a critical solution to reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” the Sierra Club said. said. a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation.”
