Manufacturing Flaw Now Blamed for Vineyard Wind Offshore Blade Failure
Meanwhile, green-energy pushing progressives are whistling past the rapidly developing wind farm graveyard
The last time I reported on the Vineyard Farms offshore blade failure near Nantucket, the facility was closed because of the failure of Vineyard Wind’s newly installed wind turbines, and the city was poised to sue.
After all, the beaches were cluttered with sharp fiberglass shards, which is a sub-optimum condition at the height of the summer tourist season.
Continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident has determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
Keep in mind that Vineyard Wind is the first major U.S. offshore wind farm. Many of the blades that went into its construction will now have to be inspected and perhaps repaired.
The turbine blade broke on July 13 and left potentially dangerous debris on beaches on the island of Nantucket. U.S. authorities later ordered a shutdown of the project, which is still under construction.
GE Vernova said a preliminary analysis had determined that insufficient bonding led to the breakage, adding its quality assurance program should have identified the issue.
The company said it would re-inspect all its offshore wind blades to check for potential defects. The company has made about 150 blades at its Gaspe, Canada facility.
“We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward,” a GE Vernova spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
I am glad they are confident of their ability to “move forward,” but I am not sure that substantial fixes will work. More debris from the broken turbine blade in the Vineyard Wind offshore project has fallen into the ocean, and is now expected to reach the iconic progressive community of….Martha’s Vineyard.
After an alert issued Tuesday by the town of Nantucket advised the public that small debris washup — mostly popcorn-sized pieces of foam — was anticipated on the island on Wednesday and Thursday, but new models based on shifting winds on Wednesday suggested that foam and other debris is “more likely to be visible on Martha’s Vineyard, rather than being concentrated on the south beaches of Nantucket,” Vineyard Wind spokesman Craig Gilvarg advised in an email late Wednesday afternoon.
The company on Wednesday mobilized personnel, contractors and resources on the Vineyard “to quickly identify and collect any foam and other debris that may appear on the island,” he said.
Beege Welborne of Hot Air blog is also following the developments related to Vineyard Wind and other large wind farm projects closely. She notes that the locals have been less than impressed by the company’s response to the continuing deterioration of the blades.
So, with construction at Vineyard Wind halted, one would imagine the wind farm company partners and GE had been all over this disaster trying to square things away, right?
Well, you’d think so, but then again, you’re dealing with renewable grifters. They don’t seem in too big of a hurry to do jack. Locals are already pissed off.
“You’re kind of good at saying nothing in a whole lot of words,” one local woman said to @VineyardWindUS CEO Klaus Moeller.
It's time proponents of offshore wind are held accountable for their disastrous decisions.https://t.co/WLB3ZbM1Mu
— NE Fishermen's Stewardship Assoc. (@fishstewardship) July 30, 2024
Of course, green-energy-pushed progressives are whistling past the rapidly developing wind farm graveyard. The Democratic governor of Massachusetts neglected to mention the crisis in her discussion of renewables.
“We have leaned hard into all things renewables,” the governor said. “This administration appointed the country’s first ever climate chief, we’ve gone out with the biggest procurement on offshore wind in the country, and we are competing every day to make Massachusetts the hub of climate technology.”
Noticeably missing in Healey’s remarks was any mention of what Nantucket officials and residents are calling a “crisis,” with the remnants of the Vineyard Wind blade failure which sparked on July 13, continuing to be felt into the new month.
Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, will try to get the attention of Kamala Harris‘ husband, Doug Emhoff, as he does a fundraising sweep of this region.
“We remain gravely concerned that micro-particles from fiberglass debris could poison local marine life. Worse still, we are still awaiting answers from the developer.”
“We hope Mr. Emhoff learns about the effects this disaster has brought to coastal communities during his visit to Nantucket,” he said.
I wish the New England fisherman good luck in that endeavor. The green energy activists among the politically connected are refusing to acknowledge the consequences of ignoring physics, rushing technology, and neglecting free market realities.
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I wonder how many sea turtles or other sea life will be adversely affected by this?
Why, I think I can go back to using plastic straws and go back to plastic six pack holders with impunity!!
Whales are washing on Shore all over the East Coast fiberglass equals this centuries asbestos
Ileagals could be hired to clean the beaches if they allowed them on the island.
“Manufacturing-flaw-now-blamed-for-vineyard-wind-offshore-blade-failure”
Gee. Yah think?!?
“…a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure…
…its quality assurance program should have identified the issue.”
A mere trifle, compared to the comfort of knowing that the entire process was accomplished by our new generation of incompetent but intersectionally superior American workers.
How unfortunate.
GE Vernova, the company that produced the wind turbine and blades claims the failure was a ‘bonding’ problem. The blades essentially delaminated which is always a potential issue in composites and probably the worst case scenario for them. They’re now going to have to test the other 150-blades that were manufactured in the same plant for signs of delamination. The blades are an astonishing 300′ long. Good luck properly inspecting 300′-long windturbines installed on giant towers in the middle of the ocean. When carbon-fiber masts are inspected using non-destructive testing (usually ultrasound), it can take a half-day…with the mast laying on the ground, longer if stepped. Most sailboat masts are easily <100' long.
concur – repair and general maintenance costs should alert a normal person to the stupidity.
The real culprit on this incident are the voters who accepted the argument that increasing CO2
is causing the modest warming the earth has been experiencing. They voted for the politicians who did this and now they’re having buyer’s remorse. Will they change their voting patterns? Most likely not.
Kinda. There’s supposedly a suit out of Oklahoma preceding this one where discovery revealed the blades weren’t tested in the factory due to length. Instead they stress tested much shorter blades. So the manufacturer knew they had a defect, potentially across their entire production line, but didn’t go out and test them and maybe didn’t inform the end consumer.
Since we don’t expect there to be any negative consequences out of this for them, it seems like a good choice on their part
There’s gonna be negative consequences. See the current to-do in woke weirdo land where bits and bobs of the shattered blades are effing up the beach and the water. When things go bad in red States media shrugs, when it happens in places whose inhabitants are ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ the media pays far closer attention.
I don’t care how good or bad the product is. Those windmills shouldn’t have been erected in the first place. In fact, that obsolete technology is not needed and is destructive. Fossil fuels are a perfectly fine way of generating power. The CO2 scare is just that, a scare. It is being used to impoverish and immiserate us.
Preaching to the choir on benefits to society of fossil fuels. The problem is, as you correctly point out, there’s a substantial % of voters who believe the opposite and vote for politicians who are wild eyed fanatics. These neo luddite goofballs don’t understand that the clothes they wear, the chair they sit in, the cellphone in their hand, the medical devices/equipment they need and so on throughout their fat, happy, 1st world life are derived from petroleum products.
The solution is to wrap all the blades in duct tape. I suggest in the colors of the LGBTQ crowd.
Well, then….since there is no eco-friendly alternative We the Government will take away your electricity but use it themselves “to save democracy and the planet”.
Such a sad state of affairs that in my lifetime I could never imagine any of this ever happening.
But here we are.
Who does Vineyard Wind’s QA testing? Crowdstrike?
Close. Crowstrike.
There have been large numbers of windmills in Canada for a long time, at least 10 years. along 402. I have never heard about catastrophic failures there.
These are particularly large blades; which makes them more difficult to manufacture, and hence more prone to manufacturing defects. There are other reasons as well. The often-observed damage mechanisms include leading edge erosion, adhesive joint degradation, trailing edge failure, buckling and blade collapse phenomena. Critical areas of wind turbine blades include the outstanding and high velocity region (blade tip, leading edge), transitional and tapered areas (plydrops, root region) and interface regions (adhesive joins in spar/shell, trailing edge).
You may find this research paper interesting reading:
Root Causes and Mechanisms of Failure of Wind Turbine Blades: Overview
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101399/
I did a bit of research about Canada’s windmills, their data is available online. I don’t have time to research it, just not that interested. My interest is in improving my life through DYI, repairs, building my own home, small scale hydo or solar. Vertical integration like business. Doing things which greatly lowered my tax burden over my life.
What really hurts us financially are layers upon layers of compounded taxes,
alcohol was never good for the vanes
It’s good that they’ll never have manufacturing mistakes again in that exotic and difficult manufacturing process, now that they know. I am confident now!
Dirty green energy. Foreign companies are making all the money, climate NGOs are being paid off, whales and other sea life are being sacrificed, and the fishing industry and electricity users pay the price. Evil !!
Take 15 minutes to read the two articles below by Robert Bryce. Very informative. Off shore wind must be stopped.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertbryce/p/offshore-wind-scandal-is-worse-than-you-think?r=r2oq8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertbryce/p/breaking-wind?r=r2oq8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I first saw the Wind Farms in Altamont Pass, California decades ago off I580. There are others in California. The issues are over time many have stopped working but each year they kill millions of birds on their north-south routes. They also do not produce the power a coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear power plant would produce in the same size.
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