One of the installed Haliade-X turbines at the Vineyard Wind wind farm. (Photo courtesy of Avangrid)
Vineyard Wind early Wednesday morning revealed that it has been given approval to resume installation of turbine blades after certain conditions are met, including the removal of some previously installed blades and the strengthening of others.
The wind farm and its wind turbine supplier, GE Vernova, said the decision to remove some blades and strengthen others followed a review of 8,300 ultrasound images of each installed blade and physical blade inspections using “crawler drones.”
Vineyard Wind suffered a blade failure on one of the turbines on July 13, which released foam and fiberglass from the blade into the ocean, most of it washing up on beaches on Nantucket. GE Vernova subsequently acknowledged the blade breakdown was probably caused by a “manufacturing deviation” – specifically, insufficient bonding of the blade materials.
In the update released Wednesday by GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind, the companies said they expect to complete this week retrieval of debris from the broken blade that ended up on the seabed floor. Blade debris on the turbine itself has already been recovered, the companies said.
GE Vernova said it is also working on an assessment of the environmental impact of the blade failure. “GE Vernova officials provided an update on the environmental assessment to the Town of Nantucket on September 18, including findings on the chemical composition of blade debris and ongoing efforts to sample the water column, sediment, and shellfish,” the company said in its press release. “The sampling and analysis work has commenced, and the results will be shared in the coming weeks.”
The companies said they were granted approval on Tuesday by federal regulators to resume installation of new blades on turbines “once stringent safety and operational conditions are met.” The firms indicated construction could resume in a matter of weeks.
The firms in mid-August were allowed to resume construction of the wind farm, but work was limited to towers and nacelles, which sit atop the tower and convert wind energy into electricity. The companies were not allowed to install turbine blades or produce electricity.
According to Wednesday’s update, eight new towers and nacelles have been installed since mid-August. Vineyard Wind is a 62-turbine project and only 24 had been completed at the time of the accident on July 13. GE’s Haliade-X turbine is one of the largest in the world, with blades tht are 107 meters long.
The blade failure at Vineyard Wind has been a major setback for the wind farm, and comes at a critical time for the offshore wind industry as a whole. Massachusetts is in the midst of a major offshore wind procurement and Donald Trump has said he will try to shut the industry down if he is elected president next month.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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