Media reports suggested that the company may defer 15 per cent of its recruitment plans till March next year. When contacted, a Suzlon spokesperson refused to comment. "We have no comment on whether the company has deferred its recruitment plans till March or not. We have no information about that. We cannot confirm this information." ...The energy experts say that the prospects of renewable-energy companies soared with oil prices moving northwards, but the fortunes have since reversed.

BP Alternative Energy has pulled out of a partnership with a subsidiary of Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind Science & Technology Co. BP Alternative Energy had originally signed a framework agreement to jointly develop three wind farms in Inner Mongolia. In a statement posted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Goldwind said that BP was suspending its wind power business in Asia.

Suzlon Energy Ltd, India's biggest wind-turbine maker, suspended a rights offer announced a month ago to raise Rs1,800 crore to buy an additional stake in Repower Systems AG. In a separate announcement, Repower said in Frankfurt on Monday that it was in advanced negotiations with a syndicate of banks for loans to fund its growth. It said banks had demanded that Repower refrain from entering into a domination and profit transfer agreement with Suzlon, and that the two companies had decided to comply. ...Suzlon shares have dropped 88% this year.

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.

When we reported on the videotaped Vestas turbine explosion, the wind energy watchdog group Industrial Wind Action Group had a list of 36 turbine failures in the U.S. Today that list has grown to 51 recorded turbine failures. Across the pond, the British group Caithness Wind Farms, which tracks such global turbine accidents, says the number has jumped to 65 so far this year, up from 11 in 2001.

There are 11 wind turbines at Green Mountain Power's Searsburg wind facility but recently one of them suffered a setback when its nacelle (or wind turbine gearbox) collapsed in high wind conditions. ...On Monday, September 15, a blade on turbine number 10 came in contact with the tower. The chain reaction caused it to buckle and it crashed to the ground, scattering debris several hundred feet from the structure. No individuals were hurt when the nacelle collapsed. However the nacelle leaked 40 gallons of hydraulic oil on the site.

A wind turbine blade came crashing to the ground Wednesday, halting energy production at a small-scale wind farm southwest of Wyanet because of what may be a defective design. In all, four turbines on Richard Shertz's property - all part of the AgriWind facility in central Bureau County - have stopped turning after a blade on top of one of the towers broke off about 9:30 a.m. "It was the loudest noise I've ever heard," he said. "I thought it was thunder."

Shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, a rotating blade on a wind turbine at Schertz's farm broke off, plunging to the earth in a cornfield about 150 feet west of the turbine. ...The spokesperson said the investigation into this turbine had just started, but the company was in the middle of a blade retrofit program across the United States to correct an "unfortunate" design issue in the first generation of this blade.

It's not just a lack of wind as the reason why some of those wind turbines in the Taconite Ridge wind farm aren't turning. Half of the 10 machines had to be turned off. After a recent routine maintenance check, it was found that five of them had non-structural defects in some of the blades. The affected turbines were shut down and are awaiting repairs, which are expected to go through the end of the year, Amy Rutledge, Minnesota Power communications manager, said Friday.

When one of the 11 wind turbines at the Searsburg wind facility collapsed last month during wind gusts left over from Hurricane Ike, it spilled about 40 gallons of hydraulic oil and crankcase oil. The spill has since been cleaned up, the Agency of Natural Resources said. ...Tedesco said the turbines - blades, nacelle and tower - were designed to withstand winds of 100 miles an hour, and that the blade came off during a gust of wind measuring around 66 miles an hour on Sept. 15, tail winds from Hurricane Ike. He said the winds hadn't even been high enough to trigger one of the turbine's built-in safety features.

A blade on one of the Searsburg wind power turbines flew off during a recent windstorm, hitting the tower the turbine sits on and destroying it. It is unclear when, or even if, the nonfunctioning turbine will be back to full capacity. It was one of 11 that make up the Searsburg project owned by Green Mountain Power. "We had some really strong winds coming through," said GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure. "A blade failed and struck the tower."

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

Britain's first offshore wind farm - located half a mile off the Northumberland coastline - should soon be producing energy again after standing idle for more than two years. Green power company E.ON is on the verge of completing the installation of a new armoured cable which will allow the blades on the two turbines off Blyth to start turning again for the first time since early 2006.

In an informal survey of 75 wind farm operators in the United States conducted by Frontier Pro Services, many respondents indicated they had fallen behind on scheduled preventive maintenance such as oil changes and gearbox lubrication because of a shortage of qualified technicians. According to Frontier, the survey found many wind farm operations and maintenance teams are so resource-constrained that they can barely keep up with unscheduled breakdown repairs to wind turbines. ..."Damage caused by worn out or compromised gear oil can be irreparable," said Frontier Pro Services lead technical advisor Jack Wallace, who has been servicing wind turbines for more than 20 years. "You can really see that it makes no sense to put off needed oil changes."

It's a daylight butchering of Mother Earth in Attappadi. Heads of towering hills are being chopped to install windmills in this ecological hotspot and the largest tribal habitat in the state. Over 20-metre wide roads, posing threat to remaining trees in the area, are being constructed from the foothills to their top to transport windmill units weighing 80-100 tonnes each by giant Volvo trucks. The green tag attached to windmills exempt them from environmental clearance which leads to mindless destruction of nature with impunity.

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.

Repairs have started to a giant wind turbine between Sheffield and Rotherham after it was knocked out by a gale. A crack was spotted in the blades of one of two turbines yards from the Sheffield Parkway during high winds last month. A special failsafe device cut in to prevent further damage - and the crippled blades were allowed to fall to the ground. Since then, investigations have been going on into the damage at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, where the University of Sheffield operate the two turbines.

China is well on its way to generating more than three times its stated target and nearly 3 percent of its power from wind by 2020 - but only if the country's creaky distribution grid can keep pace with the expansion. Amid an investment boom fueled by rising coal prices and Beijing's drive for greener economic growth, China could have 100 gigawatts of wind power capacity by 2020, ten times its current capacity, experts and industry officials say. But for the moment, production from turbine makers and investment by remote generators is moving far swifter than the grid, whose frailty was underscored by a severe icy spell in January that took down power lines.

The Gentry County wind farm's turbines are undergoing refurbishment in a national retrofitting program initiated after manufacturer Suzlon Energy Limited found cracks in the blades of its S-88 wind turbines. ...The national retrofit program calls for the strengthening of 1,251 wind turbine blades, 930 of which had been installed by March, according to a press release. During repairs, Suzlon will employ temporary replacement blades to minimize the time wind turbines stand inoperable.

Experts complain that the established power utilities require producers to generate an overly high quality of electricity, further hindering the expansion of wind power. Given the difficult geographic conditions, plans to build offshore wind stations are drawing more attention as such facilities increase in Europe. Although the continental shelf surrounding Japan is not wide, the potential is there, experts said. "Since Japan doesn't have much space left on land, offshore farms will be promising in the next stage," Imamura said.