No one’s been killed or injured — yet — but a rash of wind turbine failures is jarring a key cornerstone of the green energy movement, according to a new Bloomberg report.
The unwelcome trend of malfunctions — which includes both breakdowns and total structural collapses — is being witnessed in the United States and Europe alike. As this rare 2008 video of a collapse indicates, the phenomenon isn’t brand new, but insiders say the frequency is spiking.
The Hornslet Wind Turbine Collapse was a spectacular collapse of a wind turbine on February 22, 2008 and it is one of only a few structural collapses that have been captured on film https://t.co/LN4TwJHJMT | https://t.co/4i52AUyIPV pic.twitter.com/mLLz8PJp4w
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 10, 2020
Perhaps most disturbingly, recently-manufactured windmills are among latest string of casualties. “We’re seeing these failures happening in a shorter time frame on the newer turbines, and that’s quite concerning,” Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube Underwriting Ltd tells Bloomberg.
Last summer, a GE turbine that had been installed less than a year earlier buckled in half. Within a week, the same model notched another failure in Colorado.
You can see the moment this gas well blows up launching pipe right out of the……….. no wait a minute here, that’s a green energy windmill on fire. My apologies to those who won’t be able to power their toaster ovens this long weekend.
Green energy works best alongside O&G pic.twitter.com/ATSy6V4CSP— Core Design (@_CoreDesign_) July 30, 2022
Read More: More Wind Turbines Catching Fire
