Built in 2002, the turbine had been out of commission since May last year after being struck by lightning, according to the Japan Times. News footage showed how the turbine had been torn from its base by the strong winds, with its 20-meter-long blades badly damaged by the impact with the ground.

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The giant windmill was found to have collapsed at around 6 a.m.. Parts of it had fallen onto a road that runs alongside the park.

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A wind turbine at the Kushizaki power plant in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, is on fire with black smoke pouring out on the afternoon of Aug. 21.

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Ratlam, INDIA : There is a great thrust in the area of renewable energy and state governments go extra mile to attract projects but in the race for generating green energy, it looks like quality and superior technology are taking a back seat. On 23 March an INOX wind turbine went up in flames emitting huge amount of smoke creating panic among the villagers nearby in last week. The incident happened in Jasdhan, Rajkot, Gujarat. 

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The state-owned Taiwan Power Company (台電公司) has formed a committee to examine why seven of its wind turbines collapsed during Typhoon Soudelor last weekend, a Taipower official said Wednesday.

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The state-run energy supplier said the typhoon's powerful gusts of up to 202 to 220 kilometers per hour blew six of its 18 wind turbines at Taichung's Gaomei wetlands to the ground and severely damaged two of its six turbines in northern Taiwan's Shimen Wind Power Station.

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Ng says the wind farms are unsightly and kill birds, and are an unreliable source of energy. He makes the point that the Shanwei wind farm operates at an average of 17 per cent to 18 per cent efficiency: "The government is silly to support this project - building this white elephant just for the sake of appearing to do something green, when in fact it is damaging the environment, and costing the community a lot of money in terms of higher fuel bills and higher costs to business. The only beneficiaries are the power companies."

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Typhoon Usagi also broke off blades of another nine wind turbines when it hit the Honghaiwan Wind Farm in coastal Shanwei City, Guangdong.

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Hardly three weeks after it was installed with much fanfare, one of the leaves of the windmill at the Marine Drive came off a second time in heavy rain and wind on Thursday afternoon leaving the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) with egg on its face. ...the company had undertaken the project on a trial basis and would replace it with solar power if the windmill was found unsuccessful.

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The reinstalled windmill has only three fan leaves, compared to the original five, and the shaft thickness has been increased from two to five inches, said sources. "As we have high winds at Marine Drive, especially in the morning, we have reduced the number of wings in the windmill.

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The broken blade came from the No. 12 turbine. It landed on a beach more than 30m away from the wind farm. The turbine has not been in operation since the blade broke, but the break triggered concerns about the quality of the turbines. The broken part was still on the beach as of Saturday.

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GCDA chairman N Venugopal said that the bolts of the windmill blades were not tightened properly and the company which installed it was scheduled to carryout repair works on Saturday to fix it properly.

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A 38-tonne wind turbine crashed 50 metres (165 feet) to the ground in western Japan after the steel column supporting it snapped, officials have said. ..."We are asking experts to look into the cause of the problem. We suspect metal fatigue.

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But no definite way to solve the problem is in sight and operators of these windmills are struggling to cope with lightning-caused breakdowns that threaten their operations. On Oct. 2, a fire broke out at the Sarakitomanai wind farm in Wakkanai.

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Jiuquan City in Gansu, a crane owned by Sinovel Technology (Gansu) Ltd. collapsed killing five people and injuring another. Jiuquan City Information Office informed the media of the accident.

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Three fire engines arrived at the scene, but after surprisingly discovering that their hoses were too short to reach the 66-meter-high wind turbine, they remained on site until the fire extinguished itself in about four hours.

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Damaged rotor blades and forex losses caused the world's fifth-largest wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy post a consolidated net loss of Rs 34.90 crore for the quarter ended December 2008 against a Rs 142.8 crore profit in the corresponding previous quarter. ...Cracks were detected in 170 of the 1,250 blades for 400 turbines of the S88 V2 model supplied by Suzlon in 2007 to two of its major clients in the US -- Edison International and John Deere.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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