The public deserves to know problem
Enid News & Eagle | July 22, 2017 | www.enidnews.com
The operators of a wind farm east of Enid continue to work to find out why one turbine suffered a catastrophic failure.
Sometimes during the night of May 31-June 1, one blade on the turbine broke off and landed about 100 yards away in a cornfield.
The turbine has been fixed and is operating again, said NextEra Energy spokesman Bryan Garner. General Electric, manufacturer of the turbines and turbine blades at the Enid area wind farm, has the damaged blade and is investigating the cause of the failure.
We don’t want to be too alarmist. After all, there are 171 turbines on the Breckinridge wind farm site, and this is the only one that suffered such a failure. The failure rate isn’t excessive, but it’s something we all need to watch.
However, the failure isn’t an isolated incident either. A General Electric turbine collapsed at a NextEra Energy wind farm in Nebraska on June 13, North American Windpower reported. Earlier in June, the company also reported a turbine fire at its Endeavor Wind Energy Center in Iowa.
Finally, in late June, a wind turbine at NextEra Energy’s Tuscola Bay Wind Farm in Michigan had a similar blade failure to the Enid area wind turbine that broke, The Associated Press reported.
We know NextEra Energy is working with General Electric on the situation and will find an answer for the failures. After the local failure, NextEra Energy workers checked the rest of the wind farm and continue to monitor the turbines.
We would encourage NextEra to release its finding when they determine what happened that caused the turbine blade to break. We realize they are a private company, but this is a big project that people see every day.
We think the public deserves to know what the problems are.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/07/22/the-public-deserves-to-know-problem/