Turbine blade damaged at Greater Changhua 4 offshore wind farm

What happened

Ørsted reported that an unspecified incident around noon on a Friday damaged a turbine blade at the 583 MW Greater Changhua 4 offshore wind farm off Taiwan. No personnel were working on the turbine and no vessels were in the area. A safety exclusion zone was put in place and safety measures were activated in the surrounding waters. Ørsted is working with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy to establish the cause.

Less than two months earlier, a fire was reported at a wind turbine at the same farm. That turbine tripped automatically after its system detected an abnormal condition, a fire was then observed and extinguished shortly afterwards, and no personnel were injured. This article reported no later update on either incident. Major construction at the combined Greater Changhua 2b and 4 farms had finished at the beginning of September.

Contributing factors

The cause of the blade damage has not been established. Ørsted said blade failures of this nature are highly unusual across its offshore fleet and that it would be premature to draw conclusions before a technical analysis. The earlier fire followed detection of an abnormal condition. The article does not link the two events.

Lessons learned

1. After offshore turbine damage, an exclusion zone and controls on nearby waters can be put in place at once when no one is on the machine.
2. Cause should not be assigned until the operator and the turbine manufacturer have completed a technical analysis.
3. A second event at the same farm within two months, while the first still has no published update, is a reason to keep both investigations open and not treat them as one failure mode.

Source

reneweconomy.com.au