wind turbine buckles in half20 Jan 2018 10:47
Ellwood Shreve 19 Jan 2018
Chatham Daily News
An industrial wind turbine buckled over in south Chatham-Kent during the night leaving the motor and blades lying mangled on the ground Friday.
Chad Reed, director of investor relations with TerraForm Power, an owner of the Raleigh Wind Power project, told The Chatham Daily News in an e-mail Friday that the turbine collapsing on Sixteenth Line near Drake Road, �did not cause any injuries or impact the broader community.
�We are currently investigating the cause of the issue,� he added. �In the meantime, we have secured the immediate area around the turbine and taken the full facility offline as a precaution as we conduct a site inspection.�
The way the turbine toppled over is unusual, said Jon Oldred, vice-president of product management for HBM Prenscia. The company, which has a location in Southfield, Mich., provides software for manufacturers, including the wind energy industry, to design products with structural integrity to avoid fatigue failure.
Looking at a photograph of the crumpled turbine the Chatham Daily News provided, Oldred said, �It looks like a major buckling of the tower at the mid-point, which is unlikely to be a fatigue failure.�
He said it appears an �extreme load of some kind� may have caused this damage.
Oldred said more common structural failures that occur with turbines happen in the gearbox or with shaft or mechanical aspects of the structures.
�They break quite regularly, but to have the whole tower fail, that�s more of a civil engineering problem, and I would say pretty unusual,� Oldred said.
Chatham-Kent Police Service Sgt. Paul Pomajba said, �What we can tell you is that there is no suspicion of foul play at this time.�
He said the incident is under investigation by TerraForm and the Ministry of Labour and Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change have also been contacted.
�A number of other experts will be attending the scene to determine the cause of what has happened here today,� Pomajba said.
Steve Mead, who lives three concessions away from the toppled turbine, has long had concerns about the structures after seeing several videos on the Internet showing blades that have broken off and flown �great distances.�
�Now they�re falling apart here,� he added. �How safe are we?�
He said when the plan for erecting wind farms was first proposed, it was touted as safe renewable energy.
�I�m not feeling very safe right now,� Mead said, adding he has a full 360-degree view of turbines around his house.
South Kent Coun. Karen Herman went to the scene of the turbine collapse after learning about it from the media. Herman said she was �speechless� when first seeing the damaged turbine.
�We need to find out what happened,� sh