A $3 MILLION wind farm turbine caught fire while dozens shut down at the time South Australia most needed them - when a heatwave left 63,000 South Australian homes without power last month.

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.

Worries for the safety of wayward skydivers is just one of the concerns that has led Hobart to blow away a proposal to install wind-turbine power generators on a CBD rooftop. Perth rejected the rooftop turbines in August last year when it denied a similar application, mostly on the basis of visual impact. Concerns over visual impact and bird strikes marked Hobart's rejection of the turbines at a council meeting last night, but worries over skydivers was an added reason for knocking them back.

Three wind turbines at Perkins High School crashed Saturday when the blades broke off one of them. No one was hurt when parts of the fiberglass blades came off the turbine as it spun, winging the blades up to 40 yards away from the silver monopole tower, near the high school at 3714 Campbell St. The remaining two turbines will not be used until they are inspected and officials figure out what caused the blades to break.

An explosion and fire at a wind farm under construction in northeast Nebraska has injured three workers. One man, who was atop a tower when a turbine exploded, received first- and second-degree burns in the fire Tuesday morning. Two others, who were nearby, were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently informed Buckeye Wind, LLC. that its study found 38 of the 70 proposed turbine building sites in Champaign County exceed obstruction standards and could be a hazard to air navigation near Grimes Field. FAA guidelines generally restrict objects taller than 200 feet within five nautical miles, approximately 5.75 standard miles, of an airport that size.

3M has announced the availability of their new Wind Tapes 8608 and 8609, which provide long-lasting protection from damage caused by sand, rain, moisture ingression, insects, and airborne particles. The new tapes are also formulated to resist the damage and weakening effects of ultraviolet rays.

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

Frontier Pro Services of Banning, California conducted an informal survey of approximately 75 wind farm operators in the United States. Designed to assess the specific operation and maintenance service needs of wind energy operators, the survey reveals potentially serious threats to wind farms owing largely to the industry-wide shortage of qualified turbine technicians.

On April 25, The Hays Daily News ran a fairly extensive news story on the proposed development of the industrial wind power generation plant west and southwest of Hays. That article stated that about 80 local families have expressed their opposition so far, but it did not say much about why there is this opposition. Let me try to explain very briefly some of the multiple sources of opposition. But please understand that this is an extremely brief explanation of each. More information is available at a public meeting being held tonight in the Fox Pavilion, starting at 7 p.m. and sponsored by the Ellis County Environmental Awareness Coalition. (Full disclosure: I am a member of this group.) I would say that the opposition can be divided into three groups, and these groups often overlap.

A faulty sensor on a giant wind turbine is being blamed for huge shards of ice flying off its blades and crashing into nearby homes and gardens. As The Evening Telegraph reported in November, residents in King's Dyke, Whittlesey, had to take cover for more than four hours when huge lumps of ice, some measuring 2ft, were flung from the giant machine's blades.

PITTSBURGH Wind power may be flying high, but the young industry fears its growth may be clipped if federal rulemakers and Congress continue to set up new regulatory hurdles.....in January, Congress mandated a study of the effects of proposed wind turbines on military operations, including aircraft radar, triggering special scrutiny by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense .

During a recent roundtable discussion concerning wind power projects at the Delaware County Historical Society a participant affiliated with two local wind development companies stated that there were three issues where the health and safety impacts were predictable and avoidable---- ice throws, noise, and flicker. Since the statement was made in the presence of planners who are advising towns in the process of writing regulations to protect the health and safety of residents, I felt that a fuller discussion of the known science of these issues was important, and have prepared this report to that end.

Editor's Note: Dr. Jaffe's presentation to the Town of Meredith Planning Board on the proposed industrial wind plant vis-a-vis Meredith's 'vision' is available via the link below.

Controversial plans to build a wind farm near Aberford have been blown away by councillors. The city council's east plans panel has turned down a developer's proposal to put five 125m-tall wind turbines in the green belt on Hook Moor just north of Micklefield. A council report said the application was refused because it would adversely impact on the Precision Approach Radar at RAF Church Fenton and impact upon the Primary Surveillance Radar at RAF Linton on Ouse.

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.

Wind turbine maker Siemens Power Generation will try to convince Oregon regulators today that adequate safety measures were in place when a 230-foot tower collapsed and crashed to the ground in a Sherman County wheat field last summer. Technician Chadd Mitchell, who was working high in the nacelle, the structure that houses the turbine's generating components, died in the Aug. 25 incident at the Klondike III wind farm. Another technician, William Trossen, was injured. A third employee, Dustin Ervin, sitting in a truck nearby, gunned the engine to avoid the falling wreckage and escaped unharmed, according to a state report. ...Siemens hasn't refuted the sequence of events that led to the collapse, but it objects to the division's findings of safety violations. "The employees demonstrated they could do the work they were trained to do safely," Siemens spokeswoman Melanie Forbrick said. "The actions that led to the incident were not actions that were related to the work they were performing." Siemens appealed the findings March 21.

The U.S. Air Force Space Command said it has checked and rechecked and still believes a proposed wind farm on Nantucket Sound would not affect its PAVE PAWS radar station in Sagamore. “Everything that the Air Force Space Command is saying indicates that [the turbines] would not be tall enough to interfere with operations,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Gentry, commander of the Air Force 6th Space Warning Squadron, Cape Cod Air Force Station, the group responsible for running the radar facility. But wind farm opponents, specifically the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, point to a larger study now being undertaken by the Department of Defense, one that won’t be available until spring. That study, says the Alliance, will be more comprehensive and was itself prompted by issues with the Air Force’s initial analysis. “Until we have a written report in hand that we can review to understand the parameters of the study, it would be inappropriate to offer comment,” said Charles Vinick, president and CEO of the Alliance. “It is my understanding that there is a larger study under way and it would be premature to offer conjecture on what that might find.”

A Chugach Electric idea to put giant, electricity-producing windmills on Fire Island is giving its neighbor, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, a case of bad vibes. Radar experts recently found that electromagnetic waves from the proposed 33-windmill project would be so strong they would warp the signal of the airport's main air traffic control radar. On top of that, the sheer size of the windmills, whose blade tips could reach 400 feet in the air, would also physically block the signal of another key radar already on Fire Island.

When it came time to start repairing a wind turbine at the ethanol plant on Oct. 15, the project had to be put on hold. ..."The blade has been cracked all summer. It's been frustrating," says Dan Moore, director of project development for Renewable Energy Solutions. When the broken blade was discovered, the turbine furthest from the ethanol plant had to be shut down. All three blades needed to be replaced, says Moore, because we couldn't find one to match the other two.

For the first time in more than a year, a group other than the Solano County Planning Commission will be discussing a proposal to install up to 88 wind turbines in the Montezuma Hills. The Solano County Airport Land Use Commission will hear the issue Thursday night, a year after voting against the issue the first time around for fear of the turbines affecting the radar system at Travis Air Force Base. The difference this time is that officials at Travis are no longer objecting to the proposal, as stated in a letter written by Wing Commander Col. Steven Arquiette earlier this month. ...The company proposing the project, enXco, has offered Travis a gift of up to $1 million that the base may use anyway it wishes.