The Nantucket wind turbine failure was “extremely unusual and rare.” But it wasn’t the first.

CNN
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The blade of a huge offshore wind turbine that Fiberglass breaking and spreading The foam debris that washed up on Nantucket beaches this week was one of several recent failures of wind turbine blades made by GE Vernova — the leading wind turbine manufacturer in the United States.

Several GE Vernova blades have broken on land and offshore turbines in Germany, Sweden, Lithuania And the United kingdom In recent years, the broken blades were of a variety of sizes and types, and the company’s investigations have revealed various root causes for the damage, including deviations in transportation, handling and manufacturing, according to a company source familiar with the investigation.

A GE Vernova representative said broken wind turbines are “extremely unusual and rare.” He told the people of Nantucket “We are working quickly to complete a root cause analysis of this event,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

The broken turbine is a major setback for Vineyard Wind, which had been bright spot For youth and Offshore wind industry struggles In the United States, the joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has 10 operational turbines and plans to install 62 total.

The federal government has suspended operations and construction of the project while it conducts its own investigation into the broken code.

While GE Vernova has been in the spotlight amid the Nantucket failure, it’s not the only wind turbine manufacturer to have faced this issue, according to Indra Mukherjee, associate director of clean energy technology research at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

“It’s clear that all major manufacturers have had their share of broken blades,” Mukherjee said in an email, adding that the failures were caused by issues such as design flaws and contractor shortcomings in manufacturing.

As the global wind energy industry grows, so does the size of the turbines themselves. But such rapid expansion also comes with “enormous engineering challenges,” Mukherjee said, with the blades in particular emerging as a “major weakness.”

Last year, three GE Vernova blades broke at the Alfstedt-Ebersdorf onshore wind farm in Germany. An independent investigation into the incident is ongoing and likely won’t be completed until later this year, according to Julia Pescripola, a spokeswoman for Energiekontor, the farm’s developer.

The wind farm will not operate until the investigation is complete and it is determined that “other turbines of the same type are not at risk of similar damage,” Skripola said.

Wind turbine blades, made of fiberglass, wood, foam and carbon fiber, must withstand all manner of harsh weather and constant wear and tear, Mukherjee said. What’s more, most of the large turbines and blades on the market are relatively new designs, which means “the occasional failure is inevitable as the industry moves up the learning curve,” Mukherjee said.

The total number of broken turbine blades was relatively low compared to the large number of blades manufactured each year. Wind farm developers have ordered about 20,000 turbines — each with multiple individual blades — in 2023.

“If we take that into account in terms of volume, the failure rate remains low,” Mukherjee said.

After a wind turbine wreck closed the beach, Nantucket city officials questioned why the risks posed by broken wind turbines were not discussed, compared to discussions about visual impacts or potential risks to marine life.

“Personally, I never thought about anything like this, and it never occurred to me that we were at risk of this situation,” Nantucket Board President Brooke Mohr She told CNN earlier,.

In a statement, a GE Vernova spokesperson said, “The company’s top priority is safety and minimizing the impact of this event on the communities surrounding the Vineyard Wind Farm in Massachusetts.”

The project was set to double the number of turbines spinning off the East Coast, and state leaders in Massachusetts have touted it as a major boost to the state’s electricity generation capacity. Energy analysts have recently pointed to the project and other recent industry recoveries as Signs of momentum in wind energy.

The project is now in a state of uncertainty, and may remain so until the federal investigation is complete.