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.

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."

A small plane crashed a year ago near Grand Meadow, killing the pilot, because it didn't have the proper flight instruments for flying in that day's poor weather, a federal agency says. The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering around a wind farm at a low altitude also was a factor.

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.

Members of the Elkhart County Board of Zoning Appeals got a taste of the wind power debate during their meeting Thursday morning. One petitioner's bid for a wind-powered generator was granted and another denied. ...Anita Miller, a nearby neighbor of Ntende's, voiced her concerns over possible dangers, such as electrical surges or falling debris due to the proposed windmill's proximity to surrounding homes and electrical lines.

Butler Ridge, a new energy wind farm in east-central Dodge County, is interfering with the Weather Surveillance Doppler Radar at the Sullivan office in eastern Jefferson County, said Marc Ravinsky, senior meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sullivan. Visual noise from the 36 wind turbines could mask or distort severe weather taking place in the same area, Ravinsky said.

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.

The town's chances of becoming greener have been curtailed by its proximity to Logan International Airport, which is 0.2 to 2 miles from any given point in the community. The two locations identified for a turbine are 0.75 and 1.25 miles from the airport, according to the DPW. After submitting a permit application early last year, town officials received a verbal report in November from the Federal Aviation Administration that indicated that a 250-foot structure in the vicinity of the DPW site would create, "a potential concern with sound landing and takeoff procedures and may be within or uncomfortably close to critical surface area zones," Hickey stated in a letter to Winthrop's town manager last year.

Wind turbines have the potential to be a hazard to air navigation, according to two new letters AOPA issued recently. While AOPA recognizes the role wind turbines play in green power generation, it is concerned that their tall construction could lead to potential collisions with aircraft and impact the reliability of radar. AOPA made the comments in opposition to a bill in the Washington State legislature and on a request for comments to a wind farm proposed in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts.

A recent federal ruling that rejected 13 of 22 proposed wind turbines in Roxbury because of height restrictions was based on incorrect information, after all. As of March 18, the Air Traffic Airspace Branch of the Federal Aviation Administration reversed its Jan. 29 rulings by determining that the 13 turbines will pose no hazards to air traffic.

Construction on a $300 million San Patricio County wind energy facility will move forward on schedule after a compromise between the wind farm's owner and the Federal Aviation Administration was announced Monday. The project was in jeopardy after the FAA objected to 81 of 120 proposed sites for 109 wind turbines because of potential interference with a sombrero-shaped radio beacon that pilots can use to determine their proximity to Corpus Christi International Airport.

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.

Tooborac residents fear a proposed wind farm will make their fire-prone village even more unsafe after a turbine caught fire in South Australia. The turbine burnt scrub near Port Lincoln last month at the height of a prolonged heatwave. Tooborac, about 20km from Lancefield, has been earmarked for a 70-turbine wind farm for more than five years by Transfield Services.

One of two wind-power developers behind a proposed local project said Wednesday he was baffled by a recent federal ruling that rejected 13 of 22 turbines because of height restrictions. However, Record Hill Wind LLC Principal Rob Gardiner said he didn't believe the Federal Aviation Administration ruling would hinder the $120 million project. "We are treating this seriously because this is a federal agency," Gardiner said.

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 wind developer that became a "lightning rod" for the industry when one of its turbines started shedding ice in December, has revealed its latest strategy for dealing with ice build-up, writes Rachel Johnson. ..."We knew icing would occur but believed our turbines would stop in the event of an ice build up," he said. The investigation revealed that the most widely available guidelines on icing, including those from the BWEA, had said that wind turbines are designed to shut down in the event of an ice build up.