ELGIN, NE. (ECWd)
Credit: May 8, 2014 by lmorgan | The Elgin Review | www.elginreview.com ~~
“It sounded like sheet metal falling down.” (at Invenergy’s Prairie Breeze (Nebraska).)
That’s how rural resident Jerry Kallhoff described the structural failure of a wind turbine blade which broke off a Prairie Breeze Wind Energy tower Sunday afternoon at a location southwest of Elgin.
The turbine, the project’s 11th unit, remains non-operational at this time as we work with the turbine manufacturer, GE, to determine the cause of this incident.
Turbine #11 is located about a quarter-mile south of the intersection of 835th Road and 515th Avenue in Antelope County, approximately 8 miles west of the city of Elgin.
Kallhoff said he was out in his yard working when he heard a loud noise come from the south. When he looked up, he saw pieces of a wind turbine blade falling to the ground from a wind tower located just over a mile from his house.
It marks the second time in less than two weeks that there has been a structural failure on a wind turbine blade.
On April 21, a similar failure took place on the wind farm’s 51st unit located northwest of Petersburg in Boone County.
In both cases, immediately after the structural failure, the wind turbines ceased operation.
During the construction phase of the wind farm, it was determined that a number of GE wind turbine blades would have to be replaced due to abnormalities discovered after the blades were installed on wind turbines.
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