August 14, 2024 — One month since an incident that sent part of a turbine blade plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and littered debris across area beaches, Vineyard Wind said Tuesday that it has cut away much of what remained from the damaged blade and has been cleared to resume some offshore wind construction activities, though it still cannot produce power.
The company said “controlled cutting operations” on Sunday and Monday “removed a substantial amount of the remaining portions of the damaged blade that pose a risk for further debris falling into the ocean.” But Vineyard Wind and blade manufacturer GE Vernova are still trying to finalize plans to do more cutting if necessary, secure and remove debris that fell onto the turbine platform, remove the blade root and deal with debris that’s settled on the seabed.
GE Vernova, the company selected by Vineyard Wind to manufacture its project’s blades and turbines, said last month that it has “no indications of an engineering design flaw” that could have caused the blade failure, but instead thinks it was a result of an issue in the manufacturing process, specifically “insufficient bonding.”