Wind turbine collapse under investigation
Rune Birk Nielsen (2008-02-27)
On February 22 a 600 kW Nordtank wind turbine at Halling in eastern Jutland experienced a socalled runwaway event causing its blades to spin out of control. Minutes later the blades collided with the tower and cuased the turbine to collapse. In an unrelated event at Vig in Odsherred a Vestas V47 600kW wind turbine lost a blade.
In both cases, Vestas assume that human errors in service and maintenance caused the events, but points out that they are in process of finding the accurate causes.
"It is upsetting and very unfortunate. Now we will look at what's left of the wind turbines and determine, what happened and what we can learn from this. A lot of things indicate that it is not the turbine design itself, but human errors in service and maintenance that is to blame. We realize that in terms of responsibility, the bottle points towards us," says Peter Wenzel Kruse, head of communication at Vestas Wind System A/S.
The Danish Wind Industry states it is very regrettable with two accidents within such a short time, but at the same underlines, that accidents of this magnitude fortunately happen very rarely.
"We will now wait for the technical investigation that Vestas is carrying out before jumping to conclusions. It is very important to underline, that we have over 5000 wind turbines in operation in Denmark and that these accident happen very rarely," says Bjarne Lundager Jensen, managing director in the Danish Wind Industry Association.
When it comes to service and maintenance of wind turbines, it is standard practice, that the manufacturer is responsible for service and maintenance during the first five year guarantee period. After that the owner of the turbine is responsible for maintenance and service. Under normal circumstances the turbine insurance company will demand of the owner that the turbine is regularly serviced according to a rigorous programme.
The Danish Wind Industry Association welcomes a dialog about the rules of maintenance and service. "If the investigation reveals it is necessary to go through the agreements of maintenance and service of the wind turbines, the Danish Wind Industry Association is of course interested in making sure this happens," Bjarne Lundager Jensen says.
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