Vestas V150 turbine collapses at Aldermyrberget wind farm in Sweden

What happened

A Vestas V150 4.2MW wind turbine collapsed in November 2020 at the Aldermyrberget wind farm in Sweden, owned by Wpd, while the site was ramping up towards full commissioning. Nobody was hurt in the incident. A subsequent investigation identified a bonding failure on the turbine's blade-root inserts, caused by a manufacturing issue at a single supplier, which allowed a blade to become loose and destabilise the turbine before it fell.

As a precaution, Vestas then took around 150 V150 turbines that could potentially be exposed to the same fault out of service while it worked on a repair or replacement solution with affected customers. The company said no other operational turbines had been affected and that the fault was unrelated to two earlier V150 blade incidents reported in the United States and Australia.

Contributing factors

A bonding failure on blade-root inserts, attributed by Vestas to a manufacturing issue at a single component supplier, allowed a blade to loosen and destabilise the turbine.

Lessons learned

1. A manufacturing defect in blade-root inserts can loosen a blade and destabilise the turbine, so operators must verify supplier quality controls on critical structural parts.
2. A fault found in one turbine of a new platform requires checks on the whole batch before commissioning, so owners should apply structural integrity tests to units still in ramp-up.
3. A single supplier fault can affect many turbines, so owners and insurers should demand batch-level traceability for blade inserts and similar components.

More lessons on structural integrity and turbines, from every incident on the register.

Not yet known

• Turbine exact age and service hours
• Duration of site downtime
• Cost of repairs and lost output

This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.

Source

Recharge (rechargenews.com)