A Mitchell County family of five is temporarily out of a home because of an out of control wind turbine. ...The company put the family up in a hotel, but has not been able to say how soon they can go home. The failed turbine was part of Third Planet Windpower's Loraine wind facility placed in service in two phases in 2010 and 2011. The facility consistes of 67 GE 1.5sle turbines (phase 1) and 100 GE 1.5xle turbines (phase 2) for a total nameplate capacity of 250.5 MW.  The approximate coordinates of the incident are: 32.408429N,  100.685522W

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The turbines ran for three months before one blade fell to the ground 190 feet below. Then a second blade crashed through a nearby storage building's roof, falling into a conference room. No one was hurt. The city asked the builders to remove the contraption and rebuild it. That happened. Then another blade came loose. 

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Rapp said when the turbine and tower fell to the ground, operators shut down the 119-turbine Shannon Wind Farm as a precaution. They were eventually able to restart the remaining turbines a couple days after the incident.

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Last Friday, a wind turbine failed at midpoint and fell to the ground just approximately 5 miles southeast of Windthorst on Oliver Wells Road just inside the Clay County line.This is the Shannon Wind Farm E-03 to E-04, managed by Alterra Power Corp.

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The turbine that collapsed is part of the 204 MW Shannon Wind facility in Windthorst town, Clay County, Texas. The project includes 119 General Electric (GE) wind turbines. Each turbine is 1.7 MW with a rotor diameter of 103 meters The project was placed in service in December 2015 and is jointly owned by Alterra Power (50%) and an affiliate of Starwood Energy Group (50%). 

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Officials with Southern Company, which owns the turbine, said it started around 5:30 p.m. at the company's Salt Fork Wind Facility.

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Shortly after the firefighters arrived, Roye said, one of the burning blades broke loose and fell to the ground, causing a pendulum motion where the wind turbine began to sway back and forth. A second burning blade then broke loose and fell to the ground. 

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Firefighters on scene said there wasn’t much they could do except let it burn out.

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The turbine, located south of Loving Road in the Cox Mountain vicinity, part of the Senate Wind Farm, burned as firefighters monitored it.

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The future of the Delaware Mountains wind farms – for years, a source of more than a dozen high-paying local jobs – is in limbo, six weeks after a powerful ice storm took down transmission poles and other crucial infrastructure at the facility. The wind farms have been off-line since the ice storm, which struck the weekend of Nov. 23 and dealt a serious blow to electrical infrastructure across the region.

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HAMBY, Texas - A wind turbine north of Hamby sparked a small grass fire after going up in flames. Firefighters estimate the grass fire to be about ten acres. The fire started around 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

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"They (GE officials) won't know for a while (what caused the fire) because they wait until it cools down and check the structural stability before they even go up (the turbine)." Madden said. "The fire went down a hill a little bit. It was right on the edge of the mesa so the wind did blow some of the fiberglass down a little bit on the face of the hill there."

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SWEETWATER, Texas - A wind turbine fire had Sweetwater and Trent fire crews busy fighting a grass fire Monday morning.

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Black smoke was highly visible between Trent and Sweetwater Monday as a wind turbine at the Trent Wind Farm caught fire. "We don't get near the turbine when it's burning because pieces fall off and sometimes big pieces fall off," Madden pointed out. "I doubt it was two acres that burned.

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"We did not anticipate they would have problems that quickly," Stowers said. ...The engineering department first noticed problems with the turbines last winter, about eight months after the plaza opened in April 2010. Two are in the repair shop.

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"I'm watching a turbine on my land on fire, throwing fire balls on my property. I think it needs to be very clearly delineated: if you have property and machinery that is the source of a fire that damages someone land or uses someone's resources who is responsible for the cost," said King. (See video at source link)

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Young said firefighters faced hazardous conditions as the turbine began scattering debris on the ground. "I would gather that the turbine was spraying out debris up to three football fields," Young said. "Especially in an area like that, it was challenging because of the rough terrain. By nature, those are not good conditions for a fire."

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It is unclear what caused the wind turbine to catch fire, but this is the second time a wind turbine has caught on fire in the same area in the last five weeks.

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ECCA Fire Chief Gary Young said the fire started in the wind turbine tower and then spread to grass around the tower.

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Hospitals are supposed to be exempt from the blackouts which hit yesterday, with power company Oncor attributing the outages to a "mistake," but there were no such mistakes when it came to supplying power to Cowboys Stadium. The government has ensured that the blackouts will not affect Super Bowl venues, a decision that has left residents furious.

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