High winds are making it difficult to repair wind turbines at East Point in Prince Edward Island. Six of 10 turbines on the site were shut down recently when problems developed in their gearboxes. One turbine has been repaired, but strong winds are making it difficult to work on the other five. The axis of the turbine is about 50 metres above ground, and a special crane had to be transported to the site to assist the work. ..."Once in a while you get a component failure, and we've obviously got six of them. The Vestas company that builds these are a very reliable company."

The strong winds that buffeted the Tokai and Kanto regions Tuesday apparently snapped the massive blades of two wind turbines ...Each windmill is 103.5 meters tall, and can generate 1,500 kilowatts. Turbines No. 4 and No. 5 each lost one of their three 37-meter-long blades.

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 wind turbine set up in March 2006 was touted as the answer to energy problems in Iga, Mie Prefecture. The clean energy would supplement the power supply for radio relay facilities of a land ministry office that records water levels of the upper reaches of the Kizugawa river. But there was one problem. The wind turbine fell apart in less than two years. Malfunctions and accidents involving wind turbines have occurred repeatedly across the country, leading to suspended services and even the scrapping of one facility. Amid rising oil prices, wind power generation is gaining attention as a means to use limitless natural energy. However, slipshod surveys of wind, flawed designs or sheer incompetence have dealt a blow to the reputation of wind turbines, which are easier and cheaper to construct than other electric power generation facilities.

Campaigners are welcoming an inquiry into the safety of wind turbines after two came crashing down. The manufacturer behind some of the largest wind turbines planned for use in the North-East is conducting an internal review to find why two of its structures buckled in high winds and collapsed. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched an investigation but is awaiting the results of the company's own review before it decides what action to take. The first turbine collapsed in Scotland last November, followed by a second collapse near Dalston, Cumbria, last week. ...Wind farm campaigner John Ferguson, from Northumberland group Save Our Unspoilt Landscape, welcomed the inquiry. He said: "If there is a risk, then it is important we find out now rather than when the turbines are in operation. "The British Wind Energy Association and others seem to brush over the risk here, but these are serious safety concerns.

A giant crane has moved next to Lowestoft's seafront wind turbine to carry out the delicate task of removing a damaged blade. A lightning strike during a thunderstorm on June 8 damaged the tip of a blade on the 120m landmark known as Gulliver. Although engineers had the blades spinning again the same day a subsequent maintenance inspection revealed there was a problem. For the past eight weeks Gulliver has been out of action awaiting the arrival of a crane big enough to be used to remove the damaged blade.

The windmills — officially called “Liberty 2.5 Megawatt wind turbines” — are the first of their kind to be used commercially. They brought national attention to Lackawanna for its creative reuse of an abandoned industrial site. The state-of-the-art turbines are so new that ClipperWind had anticipated a need for some tweaking here and there. But resolving the problem has been more difficult than expected. “This one’s a pain because you need a big crane,” acknowledged Bob Gates, ClipperWind senior vice president. The work is expected to take several months, Gates said. ...While the gear boxes are being replaced, Gates said a reinforcing bond will be applied to the fiberglass blades to prevent any major damage from tiny cracks that have developed on some.

It's one of the most visible sights in Madison County; one of the blades on the Fenner Wind Turbines broke in mid-November, and is still not fixed. ...They still don't know, what caused the blade to break; they say that this has happened at Fenner before, and hope to find out why once they're able to remove the blade.

No word yet on what caused a blade to break apart on a wind turbine at the Waymart Wind Farm, Monday afternoon. Two blades on the three-bladed rotor remained intact, but one delaminated, meaning its fiberglass layers came apart. "This is on private property. No one was injured," says Steve Stengel, a spokesperson for FPL Energy which owns the wind farm. ...A total of 43 wind turbines line the Moosic Mountain Ridge. The 1.5 megawatt Waymart Wind Farm was completed in 2003.

If Eco2’s application is approved at a planning meeting on Tuesday, four 410ft turbines – amongst the tallest in Britain – will be built on farmland overlooking the village GAG spokesman Bob Slater claims the incident in Scotland last month raises serious safety issues. A 200ft high turbine bent in half in 50mph winds, leaving its blades on the ground. Mr Slater also cites an example in Germany when a 10-metre fragment of rotor blade was sent spinning 200 metres through the air.

...a Vestas V47 turbine, commissioned in November 2001, turned over at Scottish Power's Beinn an Tuirc ...the investigation process is ongoing and until the root cause of the incident is firmly established, the HSE has suggested that some precautionary measures are implemented on Vestas' V47 and V52 turbines, e.g. turbine max. speed pause to be adjusted from 25 m/s to 15 m/s and auto reset parameters reduced from max ten to max five.

A lightning strike on the Lowestoft wind turbine has resulted in it being out of action for the past four weeks, it emerged yesterday. Although it suffered damage in a storm during the summer it has now been discovered that it has suffered minor damage to one of the tips and has been shut down for safety reasons. The giant 120-metre landmark, known as Gulliver, was hit during the thunderstorm on June 8.

Locked turbine blades and an unplugged circuit board may have been behind the sequence of events that buckled a wind turbine tower and sent a technician plunging to his death. Chadd Mitchell, 35, a technician for turbine manufacturer Siemens Power Generation, died Aug. 25 when a tower at the Klondike III wind farm in Sherman County collapsed. Mitchell was in the generator box, or nacelle, 231 feet from the ground when the incident occurred. ...About 2 p.m. the blades were set flat to the wind "in the full-power position," Winneguth said, which ran counter to safety procedures and proved fatal.

A 63-metre tall wind turbine bent in two at Beinn an Tuirc Windfarm last Thursday. In what has been described as ‘a catastrophic failure’ of the turbine, the tower section has folded in the middle smashing the blades and nacelle into the hillside. It is thought by those in the industry that this is the first time a turbine tower has ever collapsed in the UK and Vestas Celtic, which manufactures towers at its nearby Kintyre factory and Scottish Power owners of the farm have launched an inquiry to find out what went wrong with the Vestas V47 turbine.

One of the turbines at the Fenner Wind Farm hasn't been spinning since Wednesday night, because one of its blades has apparently been badly bent. ...A person who lives near the site says it sounded like a car crashing when the blade broke. There no word yet on when it'll be fixed.

A SHETLAND wind farm will carry on operating despite the collapse of a turbine identical to the ones they are using. A 200 foot high Vestas V47 turbine was bent in half during storms at Scottish Power's 26 megawatt wind farm, at Beinn an Tuirc, in Argyll and Bute, last week. This site and two others owned by Scottish Power, in the Borders and Ayrshire, had their turbines shut down as a precaution until the cause of the problem is investigated fully by engineers. ..."The safest thing we can do unless otherwise advised by Vestas is to let these things work the way they are supposed to work. "Until we know what caused that turbine to fall over it would be almost dangerous to speculate."

Engineers were working over the weekend to investigate the collapse of a wind turbine which led to three Scottish wind farms being shut. The 200ft turbine at the Beinn an Tuirc wind farm in Argyll and Bute "bent in half" during heavy winds last week. ScottishPower, which owns the 26-turbine facility, has closed it while representatives of the company that manufacture Vestas V47 machines investigate the fault. Dunlaw wind farm, a 26-turbine base near Lauder in the Borders, and the 20-turbine Hare Hill facility, close to New Cumnock, Ayrshire, were also shut down as a precautionary measure.

After the industry's recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the difficulties seem to be mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even five years is up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have been known to cause fires. All this despite manufacturers' promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.

Whatever is causing turbine blades made at Gamesa Energy USA near Ebensburg to splinter should be known within weeks, a company representative said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the startup of the Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm - which will become Pennsylvania's largest wind farm - will be on hold until the blade investigation is completed, Ellen Lutz, director of development for Gamesa's Atlantic Region, said Wednesday.

DARTMOUTH - One of the many casualties of this weekend's storm was a windmill installed by former state Rep. Mark A. Howland. Arthur Larrivee paid Mr. Howland $16,000 for a windmill and solar panel system for his home at 620 Tucker Road and received everything he asked for: two windmills atop 35-foot-high poles, four solar panels and electrical equipment to convert the power generated into electricity. But on Monday morning, he woke to find that the steel poles of one windmill had snapped clean off about 4 feet above the ground, leaving the windmill lying on the ground. "I honestly couldn't believe it," said Mr. Larrivee, a real estate broker and Republican activist. "It had to be a flaw in the piping."