Wind Turbines in Mass

If the turbine installing rig is humming along, and presuming New Bedford yard space is precious, would it make sense to get the turbines up and installed even without the inter array? I'm not sure how these projects are cadenced from the construction side, but it seems like the order of installation could go either way.
 
Today Vineyard Wind posted a notice about cable laying re-commencing in July. The installation vessel is currently moored in Salem harbor.
 
I saw this beast in Salem Harbor over the weekend...
IMG_2300.jpeg
 
Another complication for VW: vessel availability. The vessel used for foundation installation is currently contracted to install foundations on the Coastal Virginia wind farm through October. There are very few vessels that are equipped for the task, so they may be stuck waiting for it to become available again. That may delay the remaining foundations until next spring, to accommodate whale migration.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Southern Nantucket beaches closed, Vineyard Wind shuts down over turbine damage - The Boston Globe

The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said it dispatched a team to work with Vineyard Wind “on an analysis of the cause of the incident and next steps.”
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
Vineyard Wind has shut down operations after a turbine about 20 miles off the coast of Nantucket was damaged over the weekend, sending pieces of fiberglass debris onto the island’s southern beaches.

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, said in a statement Tuesday that a turbine blade “experienced a breakage” about 20 meters from its root on Saturday night, but it was not clear what caused the break.
Click to expand...

www.bostonglobe.com

Nantucket residents lash out at turbine manufacturer, Vineyard Wind after debris from damaged blade litters beaches - The Boston Globe

At a Nantucket select board meeting Wednesday evening, project developer Vineyard Wind said more debris is falling into the ocean from the damaged blade and the remaining piece of the blade could soon plummet.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
Beaches have reopened along Nantucket’s southern shores after more than six truckloads of fiberglass debris from the damaged blade of a wind turbine more than 20 miles offshore were removed in a cleanup effort that will continue throughout the week, officials said Wednesday.
Click to expand...
 
The ghost of Don Quixote nods approvingly from beyond the grave.

Not good! Hope the delay isn’t too long.
 
Similar failure mode with the same type of turbine at the Dogger Bank wind farm was due to the installation being botched.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Vineyard Wind deploying additional resources to recover debris from broken turbine blade off Nantucket - The Boston Globe

Crews will also be surveying the island’s northern beaches for debris where the Nantucket Triathlon was held earlier Saturday, Vineyard Wind said in a statement.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
Vineyard Wind on Saturday morning said it was deploying additional resources to aid in recovering the remains of a damaged turbine blade from a wind farm off the coast of Nantucket, but warned that additional debris could wash ashore later in the day or on Sunday.
Click to expand...
 
vineyardgazette.com

Vineyard Wind Resumes Some Construction During Investigation

Though pieces of the broken Vineyard Wind turbine continued to fall into the ocean south of the Island this week, federal regulators have approved the wind farm to lay cables.
vineyardgazette.com vineyardgazette.com
Vineyard Wind submitted plans to the agency to continue tertiary construction. No new work would happen on the broken turbine, and both Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova are still figuring out how to remove the sunken blade.
Click to expand...
 
Groundbreaking today in Salem for the state's second off-shore wind turbine port facility. Scheduled to open in 2026.

https://www.wcvb.com/article/ground...tes-second-major-off-shore-wind-port/61885451

https://www.salemoffshorewind.com/

The Salem facility is expected to play a crucial role in the expansion of offshore wind installations since its location north of Boston could provide developers with better access to offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Maine that the federal government is moving towards selling as early as this year.

And MassCEC is working on other expansion projects as well. Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said last year that the Healey administration is pursuing an expansion of MassCEC's Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown.

The Charlestown site opened in 2011 as the first facility in North America capable of testing the blades that power offshore wind turbines, replicating the stress of a 25-year lifespan at sea in the course of just a few months. But when the testing site got a 107-meter blade built for the GE Haliade-X turbines, the kind used on the Vineyard Wind 1 project, a section of the blade had to be cut off to allow for testing.

MassCEC's website says the current facility can test blade sections up to 90 meters in length and a fact sheet provided by EEA in 2023 said that the testing facility would need to expand from about 300 feet to between 460 and 490 feet long, and from 85 feet to at least 131 feet tall to be able to test new blades of up to 150 meters. In all, the project was estimated to cost between $60 million and $70 million.

The MassCEC Board recently approved the allocation of $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to fund the initial design work to get the project to shovel-ready status and the center is working with the Mass. Port Authority as its agent for the procurement and management of design and construction services, the center said. MassCEC said Massport has issued an RFQ on the center's behalf for design services.
Click to expand...
https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/state-expanding-wind-energy-terminal-in-new-bedford
 
Last edited:
The Fall River facility is also working on an expansion for SouthCoast Wind.
 
#bancars said:
newbedfordlight.org

Troubles at factory making Vineyard Wind blades - The New Bedford Light

14 turbine blades built for Vineyard Wind have shipped from New Bedford to France, as layoffs roil GE Vernova’s blade-making plant in Quebec.
newbedfordlight.org newbedfordlight.org
Click to expand...
Thank you for finding and linking that story from the local press. And thank God for the local press.

GE Vernova laid off nine managers and suspended 11 unionized floor workers at the LM Wind factory in Gaspé last month in response to the defective blade that broke on a turbine in July, the local union confirmed to The Light on Monday. The Gaspé plant had been manufacturing and supplying most of the blades for the Vineyard Wind project until the blade failure.

Managers at the LM Wind plant may have falsified quality testing data, according to a report from local outlet Radio Gaspésie. Citing anonymous sources, the radio station reported in late October that executives at the LM Wind plant may have asked employees to falsify quality control data, favoring production quantity over quality.
Click to expand...

The following report from the radio station in Quebec is Google translated from French.
Yesterday, the vice-president of global operations at GE Vernova addressed all employees of the Gaspé plant to take stock of the situation.

The investigation, led by GE Vernova lawyers, allegedly revealed that employees were asked by senior company executives to falsify quality control data. The data associated with a well-made blade was therefore associated with poorly made blades. Our sources indicate that this would be a widespread practice in the industry.
Click to expand...
Image below is courtesy of the radio station in Quebec.

Eolien-pale-LM-1068x801.jpg
 
Not great. Given that permitting held up the project and it was only fully approved in 2021(?), I’m curious to what extent cancellation or indefinite delays from the next administration could be feasible. The one broken blade is bad enough, but getting the boondoggle reputation could be catastrophic for offshore wind.
 
Justbuildit said:
Not great. Given that permitting held up the project and it was only fully approved in 2021(?), I’m curious to what extent cancellation or indefinite delays from the next administration could be feasible. The one broken blade is bad enough, but getting the boondoggle reputation could be catastrophic for offshore wind.
Click to expand...
The lease is a lease and can’t be canceled by a hostile administration unless the operator violates the terms by, say, showering federally owned waters with hundreds of shards of fiberglass after knowingly installing faulty turbine blades.
 
You don't have to rescind leases to cluster the entire industry. Just basic rulemaking can spook investment. Earlier this year U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) streamlined the process for design, fabrication and installation certification. They also let wind operators contribute to their decommissioning fund over the life of the turbine (rather than funding that up front). Reverse those changes and wind suddenly is not attractive as an investment -- game over as the investors move on. Even projects under construction may become bad investments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top