Wind turbines rarely fail. So why did Vineyard Wind’s fall apart?

A preliminary analysis of the Vineyard Wind turbine that failed has found that, although the fundamental design of the machine’s 351-foot blades is sound, a manufacturing flaw caused one of them to snap as it spun over the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month.

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 manufactures the Haliade-X turbines, said Wednesday that its tests revealed that insufficient bonding was applied to the blade at its factory in Gaspe, Canada, Reuters reported. The company said its quality assurance program should have caught the problem, and it will inspect each of the 150 blades the facility has 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 July 13 while undergoing post-installation testing and commissioning, sending debris flying into the Atlantic. Some 300 feet of what remained hung by a few strands of fiberglass alongside the tower, which stands roughly 450 feet above the water, though when the blade points straight up, the overall height reaches around 853 feet. Most of that fell into the sea five days later; waiting vessels recovered what they could despite weather conditions that created what Vineyard Wind called “a difficult working environment.”

By that point, however, foam and fiberglass had long since reached the shores of Nantucket, roughly 15 miles miles away, angering locals and providing ammunition to opponents of wind power. Residents expressed concern about PFAS contamination, plastic pollution, and the impact of the mishap on the local environment and economy. Although Vineyard Wind insisted the material is nontoxic and there have so far been no reports of the accident killing, injuring, or otherwise harming marine life, fiberglass can cause skin irritation.

Although the manufacturing oversight that led to the failure is unfortunate, it is among the most likely points of failure in the lifecycle of an offshore turbine, Grant Goodrich, the executive director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute, told Grist. Problems arising from installation are vanishingly rare, he said, and because the blade that failed was new, that meant that a manufacturing defect or damage incurred during transportation of the blade 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 that the two incidents are not related and its investigation into what happened 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket continues.

“Our investigation is ongoing, and we are working with urgency to scrutinize our blade manufacturing and quality assurance program across 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, though, addressing the problem and cleaning up the mess the accident created may be faster and easier than addressing the damage it may have done to public perception of wind. Critics of renewable energy seized the opportunity to denounce wind farms and link the turbine failure to congressional Democrats pushing a permitting reform bill that promotes renewables.

Yet advocates of wind and other forms of clean energy quickly noted that they are far safer than fossil fuel production and do 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 the bulk of the world’s offshore farms are located. Goodrich noted that projects around the world ordered 20,000 utility-scale turbines last year, yet there were only a handful of accidents or failures. 

Vineyard Wind is among the nation’s first major offshore wind farms. The sprawling complex of 62 turbines, which one day will produce 862 megawatts, was in the earliest stages of operation. Just 10 were spinning when the blade broke and the Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement shut them down. There is still no word on when energy generation will resume, though clean energy advocates vowed to ensure that it will — in Nantucket and beyond.

“Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely impact the emergence of offshore wind as a critical solution for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wind turbines rarely fail. So why did Vineyard Wind’s fall apart? on Jul 25, 2024.