Siemens Gamesa investigates after wind turbine rotor crash in Brazil

Incident at northeastern wind farm involves G97 from former Gamesa fleet

Siemens Gamesa has launched an investigation after a turbine rotor crashed to the ground on 2 February at a wind farm in Brazil, the company confirmed to Recharge.

The company said in a statement that nobody was injured at the Delta 1 wind farm in northeastern Brazil, which uses 2MW G97 turbines from the former Gamesa fleet. Siemens Gamesa handles O&M at the project.

Developer Omega Energia, the owner of the wind farm, also said that it is taking the necessary steps to carry out “corrective maintenance”.

According to Omega, the tower structure and the nacelle were little affected by the crash. “We hope to restart the operations of the turbine as fast as possible,” the company said.

Delta 1 is a 70MW wind farm located in the state of Piauí, part of around 570MW of wind operated by Omega in the same region – the Parnaíba river estuary between Piauí and Maranhão – comprising seven projects.

Delta 1 started operations in 2014 as the oldest wind farm in the complex, and the only one with Gamesa machines. The other wind farms came online between 2016 and 2019 using GE turbines.

In 2019, a GE machine crashed to the ground at the Delta 6 wind farm, reportedly during a storm in which winds reached extremely high speeds.

Brazil has a wind installed capacity of 15GW, made up of 7,000 turbines. The machines are relatively new, with most still within the guarantee period since the sector only took off from 2009 onwards, with the first large-scale projects starting in 2011 and 2012.

The number of reported accidents or fires since then is under 20.