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 enginee... Read more
