Satellite outage reported to have knocked out control of thousands of Enercon wind turbines
Feb 2022Published 15 Sept 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
- Manufacturer
- Enercon
- What
- Satellite outage knocked out control of thousands of wind turbines
- Injuries
- None reported
- Cause
- Satellite outage
Get the next one by email
Free alerts on wind (onshore) incidents worldwide, and an email when EIR-0796 is updated. No account needed; unsubscribe in one click.
Confirm your email and every wind turbine incident on the register arrives at once as a spreadsheet (CSV), free.
Get a free sample brief Three complete verified records and the incidents-per-GW table, by email within a minute.
We will also email you about the register's paid records and plans, at most once a week and three times in all. You can stop these at any time. By signing up you agree to the privacy policy.
Companies named in the reporting of this entry (being named is not a finding of fault): Enercon
What happened
A Reuters headline and feed summary from 28 February 2022 report that a satellite outage knocked out control of thousands of Enercon wind turbines. The full article text was not available, so the size and location of the affected fleet, the duration of the disruption and any operational or safety consequences are not confirmed. No turbine damage, injuries or fatalities are mentioned in the material available.
Contributing factors
The source attributes the loss of turbine control to a satellite outage. No further detail on the cause of that outage, or on the communications architecture involved, is available from the headline and summary.
Lessons learned
- A satellite outage can remove remote control from thousands of wind turbines at once, so operators should map every turbine's dependence on that single channel.
- Fallback paths are needed because loss of one communications channel left a large fleet without control for an unknown period.
More lessons on outages, backup supply and restoration, investigation and fleet-wide checks, from every incident on the register.
Not yet known
- Size and location of the affected fleet
- Duration of the disruption
- Operational or safety consequences
- Cause of the satellite outage
This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.
Source
Published 2026-09-15. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.