Damaged blade shuts down wind turbine

SUMMERSIDE – One of the city’s four wind turbines has been down for nearly three weeks due a problem with one of its blades.

“It’s down for some edgewise blade vibrations,” said Greg Gaudet, director of the Summerside municipal works department. “It’s caused a little bit of frayed filaments of fiberglass on the blade.”

He said a crane should be arriving on Tuesday to take the blade down for repair and then to replace it.

“It was shut down due to safety concerns because of blades starting to wear,” Gaudet said. “There were a lot of high winds with (tropical storm) Arthur. It was shortly after Arthur that we noticed that there was some damage.”

Gaudet said the wind turbines are inspected every two months to make sure they are operating safely and efficiently.

“They found what looked to be a mark on the blade and we went up to investigate it last week. We finally got a crane in to look at it. We got the okay from the engineers to repair it and put it back up.”

Gaudet said the repairs should be completed within two weeks.

“It depends on the weather,” he said. “They can’t go up too high if it’s too windy.”

He said the turbines are still under warranty and this is a warranty repair.

“They’re not supposed to show this type of wear so it’s all covered by a contract with the manufacturer,” Gaudet said. “It’s only one blade of the three blades on the machine. Must have a weak point in manufacturing or something.”

He said the other wind turbines have all been checked out and are in good working condition.