Vestas V150 turbine collapses at Aldermyrberget wind farm in Sweden

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.

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.

1. A single supplier's manufacturing defect in a critical structural component can affect an entire turbine fleet, making batch-level traceability essential.
2. Precautionary fleet-wide removal from service, even at commercial cost, is an appropriate response when a safety-critical component fault is identified in one unit of a widely deployed platform.
3. Turbines nearing commissioning should be subject to the same structural integrity checks as fully operational units, since failures can occur before full commercial service begins.

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