Updated
A manufacturing issue in a Canadian factory may be the reason why a Vineyard Wind turbine blade fractured last week.
Scott Strazik, CEO of GE Vernova — the contractors hired by Vineyard Wind to install the turbines — said a manufacturing “deviation” in a Canadian factory may be the reason why a Vineyard Wind turbine blade fractured.
He made the statement during a call with investors on Wednesday, a recording of which was found on the company’s website and can be accessed after filling out a form. A transcript of the call was not available.
A spokesperson for GE Vernova later issued an email statement that the manufacturing issue was due to “insufficient bonding,” although they didn’t offer further explanation.
Vernova — whose offices are in Cambridge — has not returned multiple calls to offer an explanation.
Top officials from turbine manufacturer GE Vernova also said they will be reinspecting other turbine blades it has built so far to ensure that others are not vulnerable to fracturing.
“With safety always as a top priority, we are working with our customer and the appropriate agencies to determine the root cause and then implement corrective actions and a restart plan,” Strazik said on the call. “While we continue to work to finalize a root cause analysis, our investigation to date indicates that the affected blade experienced a manufacturing deviation.”
Strazik continued that the company had “not identified information indicating an engineering design flaw in the blade.” He also said the deviation had no connection to the offshore wind project in the United Kingdom, Dogger Bank, that was damaged by an “installation error” in May.
Both Vineyard Wind and the Dogger Bank projects are being built with GE’s Haliade-X turbines with 107-meter long blades.
“We are working with urgency to scrutinize our operations across offshore wind,” he said. “Pace matters here. But, we are going to be thorough instead of rushed.”
Strazik said the blade was built in one of GE Vernova’s factories in Gaspé, Canada. He also said all 150 blades that were built in the Gaspé factory will be re-inspected using “nondestructive” testing.
“We’re not going to talk about the timeline today,” Strazik said. “We have work to do. But, I have a high degree of confidence that we can do this.”
A previous version of this story misatributed a quote by Scott Strazik to GE Vernova vice president of investor relations Michael Lapides.
They should have tried some Gorilla Glue!
Renewable wind is an expensive, inefficient, intermittent form of energy. Dangerous to birds and marine life. Noisy and visual pollution. Apparently not durable due to manufacturing defects, design flaws and high velocity storms leading to high cost clean ups and water contamination.
They are going to have to review their Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis as well as their Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. If this failure mode was identified in either one, or both; or not at all, they need to be updated as well as their action plans. You cannot inspect quality into a product. Design, Process and Manufacturing Systems and Controls are what create quality.
Please, Explain your statement.
Ron, it sounds like Mike is an engineer explaining next steps in the investigative process. Or maybe Mike is quoting an engineer. Basically, he’s saying that there might be a problem with the manufacturing process of that particular blade. If the manufacturer can understand what went wrong in the process, they can prevent it from happening again.
Those people on the manufacturing team are humans and sometimes humans make mistakes.
There is a lot of scrutiny on this particular blade. The attention isn’t commensurate with the problem.
Why is GE vernova even responsible for making a statement? They didn’t lease the site , Vineyard Wind did. When you rent a house and a guest breaks something, you don’t tell the landlord to go after the guest!
This is 100% vineyard winds lease , they should be held 100% responsible/accountable no matter what components from other companies they are using.
In my opinion VW hasn’t handled the Q+A very well during all of this , nor did they handle the clean up or alerting the public when the first piece broke free. It took 2-3 days before they notified the public.
They need to do better!
Jason, I agree with you.
Did Vineyard Wind intentionally withhold their public announcement of this failure or are their controls deficient or unable to notify VW of this significant breakdown?
Why did VW immediately deflect this breakdown to a the manufacturer defect? What evidence does VW have that supports their statement?
Did VW accept responsibility and reimburse all costs to clean this environmental damage? Or does VW demand the manufacturer or federal and state agencies to absorb this expense?
Note that these turbine blades are 351 long. These blades are prone to break due to one or a combination of these four possibilities manufacturer defect, turbine installation, operator error or natural storm damages.
Please review my earlier comment. Agree or refute my current explanation so we can learn from this incident. Thank you. Roy
Ron, as soon as I read of the actions being undertaken and the hundreds of man- and vessel hours involved I wondered at the cost, and who will pay it. IMO Vineyard Wind must be held responsible for every action undertaken in response to this incident, whether by public or private parties.
The owners of Vineyard Wind are Avingrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Their shareholders look forward to making money off the exploitation of our resources. Let them pay, in unrealized profits, for the failures of these half-baked mega-projects.
Roy, if we’re unsure how the blade came apart, maybe it was caused by someone disgruntled by the windmills. Is law enforcement involved?
Ron, let’s say I am manufacturing a coffeemaker.The first thing I do is design it to meet specific requirements and specifications. I develop an engineering FMEA. How can I error proof this coffee maker so it cannot be overfilled and potentially scald someone?, etc. What robust designs do I use? Then I develop a manufacturing process, a PFMEA. A team of individuals, usually engineers and quality professionals, list everything in order of operation that could go wrong and institute appropriate countermeasures to make certain a bad coffee maker cannot be made. If in fact you find that a bad coffee maker was produced, then you must go and reevaluate the Design and Process FEMA’s. That has been pretty much standard manufacturing procedure for many years.
I don’t understand the hubbub. The broken blade isn’t toxic. Stuff washed ashore all the time.
The ones complaining are just harping on green energy. Engineering failures happen. Nobody got hurt by a piece of debris. It’s not like fishing gear that harms other wildlife.
I’m not a fan of windmills, but they really don’t take up that much space.
Seems the country is divided into people who believe in climate change and want to do something about it, and people in denial about climate change and rather put the peddle to the metal towards climate disaster. And these people seem to be winning.
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