Officials with the Vineyard Wind energy project and turbine manufacturer GE Vernova unveiled a new plan on Friday to recover from the failure of a wind turbine blade in July that scattered debris into the ocean and onto nearby beaches.
What they didn’t say, though, was when construction would resume on the massive wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard, or when the project would start generating electricity again.
The July 13 incident, which GE Vernova blamed on poor bonding and quality control at a factory in Quebec, prompted the shutdown and halt to construction of the wind farm, which would eventually generate enough power for 400,000 homes. So far, 24 of the 62 skyscraper-sized turbine towers have been installed and 11 were delivering power into the region’s grid until the blade failure promptly halted the project.
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Vineyard Wind chief executive Klaus Møller said his joint venture has received the go-ahead from the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to allow workers onto the tower with the damaged blade. Two blades are fully intact, while only a fraction of the busted blade remains.
Per the recovery plan announced on Friday, Vineyard Wind is working with salvage company Resolve Marine to remove what’s left of the damaged blade. That entails rotating the blades to let loose parts, if any, fall to the ocean, and then cutting off anything that doesn’t fall away if necessary. They would then remove debris from the platform and the seabed as well.
“I think this is a positive step because we want to put all of this behind us,” Møller said.
Attempts to reach Nantucket Select Board members or opponents to the wind farm were not immediately successful Friday evening.
The Coast Guard is maintaining a 500-meter-radius safety zone around the turbine to prevent boats from getting close while this work is going on. Vineyard Wind says it has crews at the ready to clean up foam and any other debris as they wash ashore. “It’s really been a unified effort between GE Vernova, Vineyard Wind, the Coast Guard, BSEE, and a number of [other] agencies,” Møller said.
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Meanwhile, Cambridge-based GE Vernova is testing all of its Haliade-X blades, which are in use at Vineyard Wind and at the Dogger Bank wind farm in the North Sea off the coast of England. These checks involve reexamining ultrasound photos that were taken of the blades during manufacturing, sending remote-controlled robots known as crawlers into the blades for visual inspections, and using a new algorithm to monitor blade health with existing sensors.
“It’s imperative for us that we feel confident and the public feels confident in the health of our blades and the turbines,” said Roger Martella, GE Vernova’s chief sustainability officer.
Big questions remain, however, such as when construction will resume on the $4 billion project or when the wind farm will start delivering electricity to the grid again.
Despite all the hype around offshore wind, Vineyard Wind is one of only two large-scale offshore wind farms that have started generating power in the US, and it is the first one that’s sending electricity directly to New Englanders. Many more offshore wind farms have been proposed, but rising interest rates and supply costs have delayed or stalled most of these projects.
Møller said he’s eager for navigation to resume in the Vineyard Wind area and to get the construction crews back to work. He said about 100 people are currently on the Vineyard Wind team based in New Bedford and another 50 to 100 people will be working at sea.
Proponents say harnessing offshore wind energy is essential to weaning New England off its reliance on natural gas for electricity generation, while critics have pointed to the Vineyard Wind blade incident as an example of how this nascent sector isn’t quite ready for prime time in this country. Tempers have flared on Nantucket, which has seen the biggest impact from the fallout of debris — a mix of fiberglass, foam, and balsa wood. Town officials in Falmouth reported earlier this week that materials from the broken blade have washed up on the town’s west-facing beaches, and pieces have also been spotted on the shores of the Vineyard, South Coast, and Rhode Island.
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Tonya Alanez of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
