Wind Fail

The wind farm woes in Nantucket keep getting worse:

Two weeks ago, Green fever dreams began washing ashore in chunks and shards on the pristine beaches of Nantucket Island after the catastrophic failure of a brand new offshore wind turbine blade. And it was only half of the humongous, football-field-long blade that had shattered and fallen into the ocean. The rest hung forlornly off of the turbine tower like limp fettuccine, hanging on for another day or so until it dropped into the water to become a temporary navigational hazard before eventually settling on the ocean floor beneath the briny deep. A massive section of a damaged 350-foot turbine blade from a wind farm off the coast of Nantucket that detached Thursday morning has sunk to the ocean floor, town officials said Friday. The large piece of fiberglass “will be recovered in due course,” they said. Within a few days, GE did quietly admit that a "manufacturing flaw" in the blade was responsible for the failure. To emphasize how big the impact is, now they have to go check about 150 other already manufactured and installed blades, you know, just in case any of those didn't have enough glue either. A manufacturing flaw led to a turbine blade failure at the Vineyard Wind offshore project off the coast of Massachusetts this month, the part's producer, GE Vernova (GEV.N), opens new tab, said on Wednesday. The turbine blade broke on July 13 and left potentially dangerous debris on beaches on the island of Nantucket. U.S. authorities later ordered a shutdown of the project, which is still under construction. GE Vernova said a preliminary analysis had determined that insufficient bonding led to the breakage, adding its quality assurance program should have identified the issue. Yeah, 'coulda, shoulda' always bites you in the asterisk.

There's always a "but..."