Vineyard Wind Installed The Largest Offshore Turbines In The Western World. But Were They Ready For Primetime?

When Vineyard Wind completed the installation of the first GE Vernova Haliade-X 13-megawatt wind turbine in the waters southwest of Nantucket in October 2023, the company trumpeted it as “the largest turbine in the western world.” It was supposed to be one of the 62 turbines that would make up the first large-scale, commercial offshore wind farm in the United States.

But just nine months later, the project has been suspended by the federal government after the now infamous turbine blade failure on July 13th that left Nantucket’s beaches and the waters surrounding the island littered with fiberglass and styrofoam debris that is still being recovered.

While offshore wind energy production has a decades-long track record in Europe and Asia, the Vineyard Wind project was the first of its kind in the United States, and the turbines Vineyard Wind is installing are larger and more powerful than any that have come before it.

The technology may not be new, but the size and scale of the Haliade-X turbine is novel for the offshore wind industry. And these jumbo-sized turbines have only recently been installed in just two locations in the world within the last year - at Vineyard Wind off Nantucket, and the Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the northeast coast of England. The Haliade-X turbine blades - which are supposed to have at least a 25-year lifespan - have suffered failures in both locations.

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 earlier this 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.

At the Dogger Bank Wind Farm - which is being completed in three sections which combined will make up the largest offshore wind farm in the world - 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 blade failure that occurred just months later during the first week of 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.

One reason the turbine blade incident at the Dogger Bank may not have generated more attention at the time is that the wind farm is located 100 miles off the coast of England, rather than just the 15 miles in the case of Vineyard Wind and Nantucket. If any debris was generated, it would have a far wider area to disperse in before nearing land - if it made it that far at all.

Both Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova declined to answer specific questions asked by the Current for this story.

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 developing the Haliade-X, GE Vernova’s Offshore Wind business relied on unprecedented collaboration across the GE portfolio, leveraging the knowledge of GE Onshore Wind, LM Wind Power, GE Power, GE Aviation, GE Digital and the company’s Global Research Center” the company stated in late 2023.

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 of 2020, Vineyard Wind announced that it had selected GE’s Haliade-X turbine for the project off Nantucket.

“We think the Haliade-X is the right turbine at the right time as the offshore industry globally and particularly here in the U.S. is poised to take off,” said then-GE chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp, Jr.

In December 2022, GE Vernova announced that the Haliade-X had received independent certification from DNV - a global assurance and risk management company -. to operate at up to 14.7 MW as a result of testing conducted on the prototype. The company stated that the “rigorous third-party certification process” had resulted in the Haliade-X becoming the largest wind turbine to receive “full type certification.”

Earlier this year, the Cambridge, Mass.-based GE Vernova scrapped plans to build even larger offshore wind turbines.

“The technology keeps evolving and growing, and there are issues that come with that and they need to be addressed along the way,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a mechanical engineer. “Europe has been developing offshore wind for more than 30 years, and there are roughly 5,000 offshore wind turbines installed. That’s a strong proof of concept. There are a lot of advantages to going bigger: fewer foundations and more power from a given area. There are also considerations to weigh against that - going bigger - including the infrastructure, the manufacturing, the ships and the cranes required. There are advantages to consolidating at a certain size even as innovation continues, and it seems the U.S. industry is settling on 14MW or 15 MW turbines.”

Rogers said it was difficult to draw conclusions about the Haliade-X turbine failures without knowing more about the root cause of the damage suffered by the blades. Still, he said it would likely not represent a major setback to the growing offshore wind industry in the United States.

“All we know is it’s one blade, and if it’s only one blade, I don’t think it is or will be (a setback),” Rogers said. “Opponents will seize on anything that goes wrong or out of whack. I think we need to understand the scale of the problem…It’s important for GE to figure this out and keep the focus on safety, beach cleanups, and communication about not touching the stuff…The larger context for us in this region is not just climate change but our serious overreliance on gas in the power sector and offshore wind as a real tool for strengthening our power sources, jobs, and economic development.”

While Roger Martella, head of government affairs at GE Vernova, told the Nantucket Select Board earlier this month that a wind turbine breaking is “highly unusual and rare,” there have been a number of incidents with GE-built turbines beyond the latest ones at Vineyard Wind and Dogger Bank.

Several land-based wind turbines in Sweden, Germany, Lithuania, and Cypress have come apart recently and a wind farm in Oklahoma has suffered enough problems that operator American Electric Power has brought a lawsuit against GE in New York Supreme Court.

A GE source told CNN on July 20 that the various failures around the world have been found to have different root causes.

In Germany, three blades broke loose from turbines last year, and the Oklahoma failures reportedly include what American Electric Power's lawsuit called a "turbine blade liberation event."

"Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies,” the lawsuit reads in part.

GE Vernova has allegedly refused to acknowledge responsibility for repairing the damaged turbines and generators in Oklahoma.

A GE Vernova plant in Cypress has also suffered a string of failures including blades breaking and turbines collapsing, and as far back as 2019, five GE turbines in Brazil and the United States failed. At the time, engineers blamed multiple isolated problems leading to blade breakages in high winds and a faulty control system.

The other failures are particularly relevant as GE Vernova declined to answer repeated questions about the frequency of turbine failures during the July 17th Nantucket Select Board meeting.

Nantucket Current reporter JohnCarl McGrady contributed reporting for this story.