Off The Coast Of England, Another GE Haliade-X Wind Turbine Blade Failure On Thursday

A wind turbine at the Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the coast of England suffered a blade failure Thursday morning as it was being commissioned. It was the second blade failure at Dogger Bank involving GE Vernova's Haliade-X turbine, the same model that is being installed by Vineyard Wind in the waters southwest of Nantucket. 

The Dogger Bank Wind Farm - slated to become the world's largest offshore wind farm when it is completed - disclosed the incident Thursday evening on its website, stating "We are aware of a blade failure which occurred this morning on an installed turbine at Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm, which is currently under construction. In line with safety procedures, the surrounding marine area has been restricted and relevant authorities notified. No one was injured or in the vicinity at the time the damage was sustained. We are working closely with the turbine manufacturer, GE Vernova, which has initiated an investigation into the cause of the incident."

For GE Vernova, it was the third known blade failure involving its Haliade-X turbine model in 2024, including the Vineyard Wind blade failure on July 13 that sent thousands of pieces of fiberglass and styrofoam onto Nantucket's beaches and beyond.

Tim Brown, the media relations leader for GE Vernova, notified the town of Nantucket about the incident Thursday at 7:42 p.m. Select Board chair Brooke Mohr said the town would be issuing a statement about the incident Friday morning.

Brown declined to answer several questions from the Current - including where the blade was manufactured and whether operations at Dogger Bank would be suspended - and instead issued a statement from the company.

“On August 22, a turbine at the Dogger Bank wind farm experienced an isolated blade event that occurred during commissioning. No injuries occurred, and GE Vernova’s Wind Fleet Performance Management team has initiated investigation protocols into the event in coordination with our customer," the statement reads.

At Vineyard Wind, the turbine blade failure is being blamed on a “manufacturing deviation” that occurred at the LM Wind Power factory in Gaspé, Canada, one of two locations where the Haliade-X blades are manufactured. LM Wind Power was acquired by GE Vernova for $1.65 billion in 2017.

"Our investigation to date indicates that the affected blade experienced a manufacturing deviation," GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call with investors last month, specifically citing “insufficient bonding” applied at the factory. "We have not identified information indicating an engineering design flaw in the blade or information of a connection with the blade event we experienced at an offshore wind project in the UK, which was caused by an installation error out at sea.”

Strazik also disclosed that GE Vernova will reinspect all 150 blades manufactured at the LM Wind plant in Canada by reviewing the radiography testing records, including those that have already been installed on 24 turbines at the Vineyard Wind lease area.

But Strazik’s disclosure on the investor call about the LM Wind Power plant in Canada means that both of the company’s factories capable of manufacturing blades for the Haliade-X wind turbines have run into trouble. At the other factory, located in Cherbourg, France, an “operational incident” in April 2024 reduced production capacity and resulted in damage to one of the moulds used to produce components for the Haliade-X.

“No one was injured and we are taking appropriate steps to safely return the facility to full operations,” a company spokesman said at the time.

More than a month after the blade failure off Nantucket, Vineyard Wind remains suspended by the federal government. While its investigation into the incident is not yet complete, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) earlier this month updated its suspension order for Vineyard Wind, allowing it to resume the installation of turbine towers and nacelles. The company is still prohibited from installing additional blades - all of which are in the process of being reinspected - or power production from the 24 turbines that have been completed since last October.

At the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, the first GE Vernova Haliade-X turbine was installed in the fall of 2023 and began producing power on Oct. 10. But little is known about the first blade failure that occurred just months later in May 2024. The damaged blade was disclosed by Dogger Bank’s owners - SSE Renewables, Equinor, and Vårgrønn - a week after the incident. In a statement, the companies said only that “damage was sustained to a single blade on an installed turbine at Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm. In line with safety procedures, the surrounding marine area has been restricted and relevant authorities notified.” They emphasized that no one was injured, that GE Vernova had launched an investigation into the cause, and that the initial findings indicated the problem was isolated to the single blade. Construction work, including turbine installation, resumed a week later.

The results of that investigation were never released publicly, but after the Vineyard Wind turbine blade failure, GE Vernova Scott Strazik told investors that the Dogger Bank incident was caused by an “installation error,” differentiating it from the alleged manufacturing deviation at Vineyard Wind. It’s unclear whether the blade in the Dogger Bank Wind Farm incident came from LM Wind Power’s factory in Canada or France.

The GE Vernova Haliade-X 13 MW wind turbine - which reaches 853 feet high at the tip of the blade, nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower - was first introduced as a concept back in 2018. A prototype was constructed on land at the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where it operated for over three years.

In November of 2019, GE delivered one of the blades for the Haliade-X turbine to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s (MassCEC) Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown on Boston Harbor, where it was to undergo “rigorous testing.”

The facility was the only place in North America capable of testing and certifying wind turbine blades of that size, and it had just received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for equipment upgrades that would allow it to conduct structural testing of turbine blades as long as 393 feet.

But the MassCEC facility, which had been constructed in 2011, wasn’t built for blades the size of the ones GE wanted to mount on the Haliade-X turbine. So the testing center “had to cut part of the blade off to fit it in the building,” according to a May 2022 report by CommonWealth Beacon. “While blades can be tested without the tip, it is not ideal, and engineers need to account for the adjusted weight.” Offshore wind technology, according to Massachusetts Clean Energy Center CEO Jennifer Daloisio, had advanced faster than expected. Even so, the jumbo turbine model was selected for a number of offshore wind projects around the world. In December 2020, Vineyard Wind announced that it had selected GE’s Haliade-X turbine for the project off Nantucket.