August 22, 2024 — Renewable energy advocates used to joke that unlike offshore oil production, the worst that could happen with turbine arrays would be a “wind spill.”
No more. The July 13 turbine blade failure on Vineyard Wind’s machine AW38 dropped parts of 57 tons of fiberglass, balsa wood and resin coatings into the sea, with fragments washing up on beaches – first from Nantucket, then onward to from Cape Cod to Montauk, at the height of summer tourism.
One month after the fracture, the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued an “updated suspension order” to allow some work to resume on the planned 62-turbine, 806-megawatt rated array. The order continued to block new blade installation or power production at the 24 GE Vernova turbines installed before the break.
Reports of broken blade pieces drifting across southern New England waters were cited by opponents off the Atlantic Shores project off New Jersey as proof of their fears that building turbine arrays starting 8.7 miles off their beaches will endanger their own tourism industry.