Smashing It!: 300 Tonne Wind Turbines Can’t Help Catastrophic Collapses

Throwing their blades to the four winds, spontaneously combusting and collapsing in catastrophic fashion is what wind turbines do best.

Remember, this is the power source that promises a clean, ‘green’ future! And that rural communities just can’t wait have hundreds of these things speared into their backyards. Except, of course, if those backyards belong to former Greens leaders, like Dr Bob Brown.

This time the chaos being delivered by the wind industry is in Brazil, and not for the first time ….

Brazil wind turbine collapse is GE’s fourth in Americas this year
Recharge News
Alexandre Spatuzza
23 July 2019

A 1.7MW GE turbine has collapsed at a wind farm in Brazil, the fourth such incident for the US manufacturer in the Americas in the past five months.

The collapse at the 216MW Ventos de São Clemente wind complex in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, which has been confirmed by GE, comes as the OEM probes three recent turbine collapses in the US — in February, May and July — and after a leading renewables insurer has raised concerns about the possibility of a pattern emerging.

Those three incidents were said to be unrelated, according to the manufacturer.

GE said it has already sent a team of experts to work with the project developer, Echoenergia — which is owned by British venture capital fund Actis — to determine the “root cause” of the accident. The destroyed turbine, a 1.7-103 model, was almost certainly built at the company’s factory in Sâo Paulo state.

Although accidents have been seen in Brazil in turbines manufactured by other OEMs, this is the first GE machine reported to have collapsed since the start of Brazil’s wind power industry about a decade ago.

A journalist at Caetés News, a local online news service, told Recharge that a blade fell off the turbine during strong winds at around 10.30am on Sunday, which caused the machine to lose stability and then crash to the ground. Wind speeds reportedly topped 100km/h (27m/s) on Sunday — far higher than the usual 8-12m/s winds in the region.

Brazil’s 15GW-plus wind industry has seen very few accidents, partly because the majority of the country’s 7,000 turbines are less than ten years old.

Recent accidents have included fires in old Suzlon machines, due to bad maintenance, and the collapse of eight Impsa turbines in southern Brazil.

GE has the biggest wind turbine fleet in Brazil, with more than 3,000 machines, after acquiring French turbine maker Alstom in 2015.
Recharge News