Operations at the Vineyard Wind offshore energy project in Massachusetts are suspended after debris from a broken turbine blade washed up on Nantucket Island beaches, prompting the community to consider legal action against the company.
The order came from the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) after a 107-metre Haliade-X blade, manufactured by GE Vernova, broke off July 13 from a turbine located on the project’s southern edge. The suspension will last until it can be determined whether the “blade failure” might affect other turbines in the project, reports the Associated Press.
“One of the blades on one of the positions was broken and folded over, bended over, and was not pointing in [the] direction that it should,” said Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller. “The way the system acts, it’s an automatic system, so the system actually shuts it down. And that’s what happened here.”
The project, located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, is a joint venture undertaken by Connecticut energy company Avangrid and Danish investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. It is expected to be the U.S.’s second-largest wind farm, with a capacity to produce enough power for more than 400,000 homes when it is completed, the Hartford Business Journal says.
The suspended operations of what was to be a major development in the country’s expansion of wind power comes at a time when other projects have cancelled or postponed development plans, the New York Times writes. The industry is also bracing for a possible re-election this fall of Donald Trump, who is “openly hostile to offshore wind.”
Concerns Over Possible Impacts
Turbine blades are at risk of failures and breakage from being exposed to various elements “including cyclic deformation, rain, sand and contaminants causing erosion, icing, high moisture, and temperature variations, … transportation damage, lightning strikes and bird impact,” according to one 2022 study in the academic journal Materials.
Though not all failures are as severe as a broken blade, across an estimated 700,000 operating globally there are 3,800 incidents of blade failure each year, the study adds.
The recent breakage highlights the risks of failing infrastructure at offshore wind farms, which can affect nearby communities and expose marine wildlife to dangerous pollutants—though so far, no injuries to people or wildlife have been reported.
Local fishers are also concerned about how it could affect their business.
“We were always told we were going to be able to fish around these things, that they weren’t going to affect our livelihood,” said charter boat captain and former Select Board member Bob DeCosta.
Critics have noted that the break occurred during the summer when weather is least chaotic, and have speculated both that more breaks may occur in winter months and that incidents will increase as more turbines are installed, the Maine Wire writes.
But blade breakages remain relatively rare—in a 2015 report, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office stated that while no industry “assessment of catastrophic wind turbine failures” had yet been completed, “they are considered rare events with fewer than 40 incidents identified in the modern turbine fleet of more than 40,000 turbines installed in the United States as of 2014.”
In that same year, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported 113 accidents “impacting people or the environment” from fossil fuel and biofuel pipelines. A total of 72 such incidents were reported in 2023 alone.
And in 2014, the U.S. Center for Biological Diversity published a map that showed 8,000 “significant” pipeline incidents in the U.S. between 1986 and 2013, producing more than 500 deaths, more than 2,300 injuries, and nearly US$7 billion in damage.
Still, the Vineyard Wind blade breakage is not the first of its kind. GE Vernova blades have posed problems at a few onshore wind farms, and in May, one of them broke at the Dogger Bank A project off the UK coast. A report on the cause of the Dogger Bank break has not been released, Reuters says.
Residents Criticize Vineyard Wind’s Response
The blade on Nantucket Island initially broke 65 feet from its root on the turbine, and Vineyard wind and GE Vernova have said the cause of the break is still unknown. According to the company, the broken blade was one of three newly manufactured units that were installed to replace original blades that were damaged during the lifting process. Contrary to rumours in circulation, the now-broken blade itself was not previously broken and repaired before being reinstalled.
Residents of Nantucket have criticized Vineyard Wind for failing to notify the community of the event until 5 p.m. on July 15, two days after the blade broke and only hours before debris would start washing up onshore.
The company says it immediately contacted BSEE, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other relevant authorities. The company’s communications director, Craig Gilvarg, told the Nantucket Current that town officials were contacted after the company was able to run an analysis modelling potential debris flows.
But at least one local representative wasn’t satisfied.
“This community would have been much better prepared in terms of communicating to our residents about the impending risk before it became an actual risk, with debris on our beaches,” said Brooke Mohr, the town’s Select Board chair, who added the response “was inadequate for this community.”
A significant part of the remaining blade broke off on the morning of July 18. In a statement issued after that event, Vineyard Wind said crews had been dispatched to remove the bulk debris and the company was “staying apprised of GE Vernova’s efforts to manage the situation, including the removal and recovery of the remaining blade attached to the turbine.”
Residents have been advised not to touch any turbine blade material or try to dispose of it using usual residential waste processes. Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have tried to assure the public that pieces of the blade, which are composed of fibreglass, are a non-toxic, “inert substance”, but said they would need to await further testing to confirm whether the pieces could contribute to PFAS pollution.
Nantucket residents have also raised concerns about the physical risks of swimming near the site. “I think our community would like to understand the impact of fibreglass particles in the water where we are swimming and where we are fishing,” Mohr said.
Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have said they would listen to the communities affected by the broken turbine and are conducting a “root cause analysis” to find out the cause of the break, writes the Vineyard Gazette.
The Town of Nantucket Select Board was expected to meet today to discuss potential litigation strategies against Vineyard Wind to recover costs associated with the broken blade.
