Wind turbine blades rip loose near Esbjerg and southwestern Sweden, one landing on a hiking path A malfunction on a Vestas wind turbine in the town of Falkenberg on Sweden's southwest coast could have resulted in tragedy, as one of the structure's large blades flew off and landed on a track used by hikers.

Fresh concerns have emerged over the future of BP's alternative energy business after a fire broke out at one of the company's largest solar power installations in Germany. The incident on June 21 destroyed nearly 200 sq m of one of the world's largest roof-mounted solar panel arrays on a warehouse complex in Bürstadt, near Mannheim.

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.

Wind power may be one of the cleaner, greener energy sources available, but turbine and blade failures point to dangers that were not anticipated, says Michael Connellan

In what implies a Rs.1 billion ($25 million) hit on its balance sheet for the current quarter, leading wind power equipment-maker Suzlon Energy will refit wind turbine blades for a project in the US, the company said Monday. “The company will do a retrofit programme to resolve blade-cracking issues discovered during the operations of some of its S88 turbines in the US,” the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange Monday.

A failure in one of the wind turbines owned by the Iberdrola company in the Pedregal Mountains, Esteiro (Muros), resulted in a forest fire that razed a hectare of the mountain.

The mount albaceteño returned to give a new scare yesterday. A aerogenerador of the Aeolian park of the Anorias in Pétrola began to burn on the four with afternoon and caused a forest fire in the place known like the Cord.

Editor's Note: This translation is not great but this fire in Albacete, Spain was caused by a wind turbine. Apparently this is the second incident.

A compilation as of November 1, 2006 of turbine accidents in the USA and abroad by accident type, date, site, state/country and turbine model.

In the beginning of the nineties, ECN and consultants in the Netherlands were approached by local authorities and developers of wind farms with the question: “Is it safe to erect a wind turbine at this location?”

"Developers and owners of wind turbines have a duty to ensure the safety of the general public and their own staff. However, there are currently no guidelines for dealing with potential dangers arising from ice thrown off wind turbines. This puts developers, owners, planning authorities and insurers in a difficult position. To rectify this situation, the work presented here has commenced in order to produce an authoritative set of guidelines. Initial work has resulted in the development of a risk assessment methodology which has been used to demonstrate that the risk of being struck by ice thrown from a turbine is diminishingly small at distances greater than approximately 250 m from the turbine in a climate where moderate icing occurs."

The wind energy industry has been growing at nearly 30 percent per year for the last decade. The heavy push for more green energy has created a gold rush of sorts...which means buyer beware ...