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Vineyard Wind to take down more blades following inspections after July failure – Nantucket Current
Report from Jason Graziadei • Oct 23, 2024. Photo: Kit Noble – The Nantucket Current (reprinted with permissions)
Vineyard Wind will be removing more blades that have already been installed at the wind farm southwest of Nantucket following the completion of inspections conducted in the aftermath of the July 13th blade failure.
GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the turbines and blades being installed by Vineyard Wind, stated early Wednesday that it intends to remove “some blades” from the wind farm after the re-examination of more than 8,300 ultrasound images per blade and physical blade inspections with “crawler” drones. It’s unclear how many blades will be removed or what the inspections revealed.
The companies will also be “strengthening” other blades, apparently in response to what was found during the inspections. The process of how blades are strengthened was not disclosed.
During an earnings call with investors Wednesday morning, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said the number of blades found with a manufacturing deviation was in the “low single-digit proportion” of all the company’s manufactured blades but did not specify the exact number.
“We can say today that a very small proportion, low single-digit proportion, of our manufactured blades, in totality, also had a manufacturing deviation similar to the blade that we experienced the failure at Vineyard Wind,” Strazik said. “In those cases, we’re taking action on those blades, and we’re doing that right now, and really now getting to a point of shifting back to execution out at sea.
Vineyard Wind claimed the companies on Wednesday “were granted approval to return to installing new blades on turbines at the project once stringent safety and operational conditions are met.” This has not been confirmed by the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement yet.
“We have finalized root cause analysis and confirm the blade at issue at Vineyard Wind was caused by a manufacturing deviation from our factory in Canada,” Strazik said on the company’s earnings call. “We have been very intentional, thorough, not rushed, in reevaluating our blade quality across offshore wind. In totality, as we re-accelerate progress on our projects, we are proactively strengthening some of the blades either back at the factory or in the field to improve quality and readiness for their intended useful life. We continue installing turbines in Dogger Bank, while at Vineyard Wind, we’re installing towers and nacelles, and are very close to resuming blade installation.”
Returning Vineyard Wind to full operations and power production will resume “only after additional progress is made and all requisite approvals are granted,” the companies disclosed.
The Vineyard Wind project remains under a suspension order from BSEE following the disastrous turbine blade failure on July 13 that left Nantucket’s beaches littered with foam and fiberglass debris. That order was modified in August to allow Vineyard Wind to continue installing turbine towers and nacelles. Since then, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have installed eight new towers and nacelles (the box at the top of the towers) at the wind farm.
Vineyard Wind also stated Wednesday that the removal of the damaged blade from the sea floor that began earlier this month will be completed this week and that the removal of the root of the blade from the rotor hub “is expected to occur in the coming weeks.”
With regard to the ongoing environmental analysis of the blade failure, the companies’ sampling and analysis work has begun, and they pledged to share the results in the coming weeks.
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From Mary Chalke: Mary has been walking beaches at Nantucket since July, showing us the destruction of just one blade – hear her update, here:
Note that Vineyard Wind is not saying it is packing up and going home – it is saying it will remove and repair blades and the future of the wind farm will continue.
RINewsToday continues its series on the Vineyard Wind turbine blade failure.
More stories here: https://rinewstoday.com/?s=vineyard+wind