A Lot Was Riding on This Wind Farm. Then Giant Shards Washed Up in Nantucket. (Wall Street Journal)
This summer was supposed to be a breakout season for the faltering offshore wind business in the U.S. Instead it may be defined by an ill-timed break.
A large project off the coast of Massachusetts, called Vineyard Wind, remains at a standstill following an accident that dropped a massive turbine blade into the ocean last month and washed chunks of debris onto Nantucket beaches.
The blade broke at the height of summer and at a pivotal moment for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has struggled with rising costs, political opposition and a wave of canceled and renegotiated contracts. Efforts to launch the sector in the U.S. are considered key to President Biden’s climate aspirations but would be especially vulnerable if former President Donald Trump returns to office.
Of the many clean-energy incentives and policies approved by Congress or the Biden administration in recent years, offshore wind projects and electric vehicles have been singled out repeatedly by Trump with particular ire.
“We are going to make sure that ends on day one,” Trump said at a campaign event in May, talking about an offshore wind project in New Jersey. “I will write it out in an executive order.”
The project offshore Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard is among the largest planned wind farms in U.S. waters, with the capacity to deliver electricity to around 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. It was the first U.S. commercial offshore wind installation to start delivering grid power earlier this year and has more than a third of its turbines in place.
As chunks of debris washed ashore in Nantucket in mid-July, beaches closed for a day. The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement halted construction of additional turbines along with power generation from the installed turbines. The agency said it had launched its own investigation into the incident. More debris later washed up on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod beaches.
Turbine maker GE Vernova has blamed “insufficient bonding,” or glue, as the reason for the break. It said it was a manufacturing problem and there is no underlying design flaw that would affect other installed blades. The blade had been recently installed and the turbine was undergoing reliability tests.
The company hired an engineering firm to look at potential environmental impacts.
Offshore wind turbines are massive. The broken blade was around 351 feet long, taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Manufacturing giant turbine blades is both a high-tech and hands-on process. GE Vernova takes ultrasound images of each blade it makes, a few centimeters at a time, and now is combing through images of around 150 offshore blades.
A check of those images should have caught the problem with the blade at Vineyard Wind, but didn’t, Strazik said. GE Vernova this week said it also plans inspections of installed blades with remote-operated robots.
