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Turbine 'leaned then collapsed' at US wind farm: urgent probe underway
ReCharge News|Andrew Lee |Feb 22, 2023
The turbine at the Pioneer Trail project in the state of Illinois came down late last week, operator RWE Renewables Americas confirmed to Recharge. Local media reports said the turbine had been leaning to one side for 36 hours before collapsing. The 150MW Pioneer Trail, which entered service in 2011, uses 94 1.6MW GE turbines.
The turbine at the Pioneer Trail project in the state of Illinois came down late last week, operator RWE Renewables Americas confirmed to Recharge. Local media reports said the turbine had been leaning to one side for 36 hours before collapsing. The 150MW Pioneer Trail, which entered service in 2011, uses 94 1.6MW GE turbines.
RWE says team looking for answers to 'prevent something like this happening again' after incident at GE-equipped Illinois project
An investigation is underway after a turbine at a US wind farm leaned and then collapsed to the ground.
The turbine at the Pioneer Trail project in the state of Illinois came down late last week, operator RWE Renewables Americas confirmed to Recharge.
Local media reports said the turbine had been leaning to one side for 36 hours before collapsing.
The 150MW Pioneer Trail, which entered service in 2011, uses 94 1.6MW GE turbines.
A spokesperson for RWE told Recharge: “The turbine was not operational during the time it was leaning, including the period immediately preceding it falling over. There were …
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RWE says team looking for answers to 'prevent something like this happening again' after incident at GE-equipped Illinois project
An investigation is underway after a turbine at a US wind farm leaned and then collapsed to the ground.
The turbine at the Pioneer Trail project in the state of Illinois came down late last week, operator RWE Renewables Americas confirmed to Recharge.
Local media reports said the turbine had been leaning to one side for 36 hours before collapsing.
The 150MW Pioneer Trail, which entered service in 2011, uses 94 1.6MW GE turbines.
A spokesperson for RWE told Recharge: “The turbine was not operational during the time it was leaning, including the period immediately preceding it falling over. There were no injuries as a result of this incident or damage to the surrounding area reported.
“We have notified local authorities and have put up barricades to limit direct access to the turbine to ensure public safety while we investigate the root cause of the incident.”
RWE added: “Our team is working diligently to figure out what caused this incident, how to remediate it, and how to incorporate any learnings, if necessary, from this incident to help prevent something like this happening again in the future.”
GE turbines suffered a spate of collapses in the US and Brazil in 2019, a series of incidents that the company later told Recharge was down to a variety of individual factors rather than a single systemic issue.