Wind turbine fire at Stemwede Bürgerwindpark

What happened

A turbine at the Stemwede Bürgerwindpark in North Rhine-Westphalia caught fire early on a Tuesday. No one was hurt. The operator had already tried to put the fire out and had shut the turbine down. The local fire brigade secured the site, checked for embers, and stopped the fire spreading to nearby fields. The damaged machine was a Nordex N43 of 600 kW. The wind farm, of about 6 MW, was built in 1998 and was no longer serviced by Nordex.

Contributing factors

The managing director told the reporter that a defective brake started the fire, and that the turbine had been braked several times because of negative electricity prices, which he said the law required. He said turbines of this type are not built for repeated ramping up and down, unlike larger pitch-controlled machines. These points are his account. Nordex had not commented.

Lessons learned

1. Operators of ageing turbines that rely on mechanical braking should review brake condition where the market forces frequent stops.
2. Curtailment duties should be checked against what the original turbine design was built to do.
3. Where a fire in the turbine cannot be put out, crews should secure the site and watch for embers that could spread to surrounding land.

Source

Recharge (rechargenews.com)