Over the weekend, reports of a blade missing from one of the mammoth turbines and another blade being badly bent out of shape came to light. The cause of the damage has yet to be established, however some say it could be down to icy weather.

An investigation suggests an explosion and fire inside a Nebraska wind turbine was caused by a "foreign object". ...the "object" blew into the turbine causing the blast.

One of the blades of a Suez Energy North America V-90 wind turbine situated approximately 1,600 feet away, between her house and the Northumberland Strait, was damaged. Pieces were dangling from the blade and other pieces were strewn throughout a field, right up to her back door. ...Sabota reported that blades on two of the three turbines in Suez Renewable Energy North America's Norway wind park sustained some damage.

The 10 wind turbines at the Taconite Ridge wind farm will probably still be motionless until early February, a company spokesperson said Thursday. Nine of the ten wind turbines now are having repairs done to blades, instead of just five, that was reported earlier. The completion date for repairs has been pushed back from mid-January, said Amy Rutledge, Minnesota Power communications manager.

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."

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.

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.

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.