Firefighters responded to a report of a wind turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from the Schuylkill County Communications Center.

Firefighters responded to a report of a turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from Schuylkill County Communications. ...In service since March 2007, this G87 turbine is one of the original 13 turbines which was part of the Locust Ridge I.

Several Wisconsin residents living near wind turbines or in areas where wind farms are proposed testified against the statewide wind siting bill Tuesday at the Capitol. They cited ill health effects. "Everyone here has talked about all about jobs and money," said Brownsville resident Gerry Meyer. "What about our health?"

The windturbine that started spinning wildly on May 3 disintegrated two or three days later, according to the California Highway Patrol. All that is left now is a turbine-less twisted tower. The CHP closed Highway 58 for hours after it was notified that the turbine was spinning out of control on Sunday. The closure snarled traffic in the area.

Officials at ReDriven Power Inc. are confident of their young company's continued success, but concede they've recently issued a recall on the blades of 10 turbines installed in the U.S. ..."We did have a blade problem," said president and CEO Joseph Ianni, when The AgriNews paid a visit to the firm's headquarters inside a former textile mill recently.

"We're two-thirds complete. It's gone very well and we'll get this done in the next couple of months. We're on schedule," said Duncan Koerbel, chief reliability officer of the Mumbai, India-based company, the third-largest wind turbine supplier in the United States. The company has taken a $35 million charge for the program to replace all 1,200 blades in its previous generation of blades, some of which developed cracking near the base. One blade broke off a turbine in Illinois.

A faulty windmill near Tehachapi shuts down all lanes of Highway 58 between highways 202 and 14; and CHP Officers say it could be days before the roadway re-opens. Mojave CHP got the call about the out-of-control windmill located in the Tehachapi Wind Farm a little after 1:20 Sunday afternoon.

A runaway windmill in Tehachapi closed Highway 58 -- a major east-west freeway connecting California's southern Central Valley to Las Vegas, Nevada and Arizona -- for most of the day Sunday. As of 6:45 p.m., the highway remained closed between Tehachapi and Mojave. Officials had no estimate as to when it might reopen

It could be a major safety hazard, windmills near the 1-10 in North Palm Springs crashing down to the ground. It happened yesterday, and now there's an investigation as to why the wind turbine, nearly 200 feet fell. "It went into overspeed, some sort of maintainence or some sort of malfunction," said Jeff Welton of the Palm Springs based Wintec Energy.

A blown transformer that has idled scores of wind turbines at the Smoky Hills Wind Farm for about four months is expected to be replaced soon. "If all goes well, it should be online in the next couple weeks," said Cinthia Hertel, a spokeswoman for Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, one of the utilities with contracts to receive power from the wind farm, which is located along Interstate Highway 70 at the Ellsworth/Lincoln county line.

At NREL, senior engineers are expanding a research partnership with operators, utilities and turbine manufacturers to determine why some key wind turbine components tend to wear too soon - sometimes within a few years of installation. That's a problem because wind turbines are expected to operate for 20 years. Early equipment fatigue, especially in turbine gearboxes, threatens to reduce performance and drive up wind power costs just as the industry is poised to capture a greater share of U.S. generating capacity.

He said that people don't realize that a wind farm is constant maintenance, and to ensure longevity, preventative maintenance is needed. ..."Wind energy is not the complete answer to our energy needs," McNeilus said. "It is a piece of the pie, but you still have to have the whole pie, because there are days when the wind doesn't blow."

New blades will be installed on four turbines that were shut down temporarily at two locations in the area. A crew yesterday replaced the blades on the wind turbine at Turtle Plastics in Lorain. New blades also will be placed on three turbines at Perkins High School in Perkins Township. The four turbines were built by the same company and were shut down to ensure safety after the blades broke off a turbine at Perkins High School.

Public Service Commission spokeswoman Anne Dalton said the agency requested information from Noble on turbine equipment and operations before the collapse, debris scatter and whether the company had proper emergency response and maintenance procedures, as well as whether they were followed.

This news report was submitted to Windaction.org by Scott Jackson, a reseller of Redriven windmills. Mr. Jackson is seeking to get the Redriven turbine de-certified in the State of California for safety reasons.

State investigators from the Public Service Commission are looking into the fiery collapse of a wind power turbine at a turbine farm in Clinton County. A preliminary examination by Nobel Environmental Power, owner of the $200 million, 65-turbine Altona Wind Park, and General Electric Co., manufacturer of the 1.5-megawatt turbines, found "wiring anomalies" prevented two turbines from shutting down as designed during a power outage.

Noble Environmental Power officials say they have detected a "wiring anomaly" in two Altona wind turbines, including the one that snapped in half last Friday. As the preliminary investigation continues into how a massive turbine suddenly collapsed, Noble officials said this week that the entire wind park experienced a loss of power Friday and that two of its 65 turbines apparently malfunctioned.

Many residents were shocked that a massive wind-turbine could come tumbling down and officials say it could take months to learn why one collapsed Friday. Mike Fellion flew over the wreckage Saturday morning and was amazed to see that pieces of the structure appeared to have been thrown "about a quarter-mile away."

Noble Environmental Power has confirmed that a turbine collapsed at its Altona, N.Y., wind park Friday morning, but said no one was injured in the collapse and ensuing fire. In a statement released by the company Friday, company spokeswoman Maggy Wisniewski confirmed one turbine had collapsed and that a small fire resulted, but she refused to speak on the record with a NewsChannel 5 reporter.

A 50-ton structure fell 246 feet to the frozen ground on Saturday when the blades of a turbine under construction east of Waverly caught wind and started rotating at a speed reaching 60 rpm. The hub housing the generating components of the Cannon II turbine and the structure's three 177-foot blades collapsed after spinning for hours at the mercy of the wind, says Waverly Light and Power General Manager Diane Johnson. A gust caught the blades prematurely on Friday.