A semitrailer was damaged Monday morning when it struck a 170-foot wind turbine blade being hauled on Illinois Route 130 on the north side of Charleston. No injuries were reported as a result of the collision that occurred shortly after 11 a.m. at the intersection of Route 130/Olive Avenue and Seventh Street adjacent to the Kirchner Building Center.

One of the large wind turbine blades being hauled from Searsport to the Canadian Maritimes hit and broke a traffic light and pulled down wires at Hogan Road and Mount Hope Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, according to Bangor police.

The May 14 fire at the skyscraper-size Turbine 12 at the Locust Ridge I commercial wind farm in Mahanoy Township occurred during routine maintenance, according to a company official. Jan Johnson, corporate communications director for Iberdrola Renewables in Portland, Ore., which owns the wind farm, said Thursday that Turbine 12 is still shut down. When asked how the fire started, she said, "We're still investigating."

With construction ramping up again unexpectedly in Cohocton, town officials are looking at their legal options in keeping the work by developer First Wind in line with agreements signed between the parties - even if it means a court date. Town Supervisor Jack Zigenfus announced at Monday night's town board meeting major work is being performed on the 50-turbine wind-powered electricity generation project on Pine, Lent and Dutch hills.

Firefighters responded to a report of a wind turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from the Schuylkill County Communications Center.

Firefighters responded to a report of a turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from Schuylkill County Communications. ...In service since March 2007, this G87 turbine is one of the original 13 turbines which was part of the Locust Ridge I.

The windturbine that started spinning wildly on May 3 disintegrated two or three days later, according to the California Highway Patrol. All that is left now is a turbine-less twisted tower. The CHP closed Highway 58 for hours after it was notified that the turbine was spinning out of control on Sunday. The closure snarled traffic in the area.

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph public health directors are asking the recently launched Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion to investigate the effects of wind turbines. "We have written our letter specifically recommending that they consider large population-based health studies," medical officer of health Dr. Nicola Mercer said yesterday. ...Increasingly, municipalities want higher levels of government to set standards and probe health concerns like noise and electromagnetic disturbances.

Officials at ReDriven Power Inc. are confident of their young company's continued success, but concede they've recently issued a recall on the blades of 10 turbines installed in the U.S. ..."We did have a blade problem," said president and CEO Joseph Ianni, when The AgriNews paid a visit to the firm's headquarters inside a former textile mill recently.

"We're two-thirds complete. It's gone very well and we'll get this done in the next couple of months. We're on schedule," said Duncan Koerbel, chief reliability officer of the Mumbai, India-based company, the third-largest wind turbine supplier in the United States. The company has taken a $35 million charge for the program to replace all 1,200 blades in its previous generation of blades, some of which developed cracking near the base. One blade broke off a turbine in Illinois.

A faulty windmill near Tehachapi shuts down all lanes of Highway 58 between highways 202 and 14; and CHP Officers say it could be days before the roadway re-opens. Mojave CHP got the call about the out-of-control windmill located in the Tehachapi Wind Farm a little after 1:20 Sunday afternoon.

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

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.