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The 300-foot blade section that detached from a Vineyard Wind turbine this week sank to the ocean floor, Nantucket officials said Friday. Nautical charts show waters are about 150 feet deep in the area (or roughly half as deep as the blade is long).
Meanwhile, a federal official said they have no time estimate on when the project shutdown might end because the investigation is in its early stages. While officials try to determine the cause of the blade failure, turbine components will continue to arrive at the New Bedford staging terminal, but won’t be heading back out to sea for installation.
Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have not shared their plans for retrieving the major blade piece as of Friday afternoon. About half of the fiberglass shell remains attached to the nacelle, and most of the foam core was released during the initial failure on July 13, according to Nantucket officials.
Amid concerns about health and economic impacts, town officials said Vineyard Wind is developing a water quality testing plan for the island and setting up a process in which affected people can file claims.
“Vineyard Wind is fully responsible for the repercussions on Nantucket, and Town Administration and the Select Board will ensure they are held accountable,” said the town in a statement Friday. Per a meeting agenda filed the same day, the Select Board and county commissioners are scheduled to meet next week to discuss possible litigation against the company over the incident.
Also on Friday, BSEE and Vineyard Wind representatives delivered limited updates during a previously scheduled meeting of state officials and fishing industry members. The group meets regularly to discuss offshore wind developments; the turbine incident was added to the top of the agenda and discussed for just under an hour.
“Depending on your views on offshore wind, this was a very unfortunate bump in the road, or depending if you’re a skeptic, it’s a sign of things to come,” said Dan McKiernan, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries, at the meeting’s outset. “But hopefully we can get through this.”
“Some of this I will say is really new territory. BSEE has a lot of jurisdictions and regulations on the outer continental shelf with oil and gas. Especially with offshore wind, we’re trying to ensure the authorities and jurisdictions within the federal government are better understood,” Seong Kim, assistant director for engagement at BSEE, told the group.
The agency has been regulating the oil and gas industry for more than a decade, with a division devoted to oil spill preparedness.
BSEE and BOEM cooperate in the leasing of the expansive outer continental shelf for energy. Offshore wind is a new and developing industry under their portfolio.
Per a government site, BOEM “studies the environment and leases resources,” while BSEE “provides regulatory oversight and enforcement” for environmental compliance, inspections and investigations.
BOEM, the lead permitting agency for offshore wind projects, has been notably silent on the incident, though Kim said BOEM was very much engaged with them in the process.
A BOEM spokesperson has directed requests for comment to BSEE, and a BOEM official in the Friday meeting said he did not have anything further to add to BSEE’s updates.
“This incident is on all of our minds,” said Luke Feinberg, an energy program specialist at BOEM, in response to a later question. ”We’re really trying to understand what happened … what the causes are.”
BSEE officials are conducting the investigation, separate from that undertaken by Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova, to determine what went wrong. As part of that process, they have been interviewing staff from both companies, said Kim.
“We’re trying to get all the information and understand the [quality assurance] and [quality control] that went in on the installation of the blade. We’re trying to understand the plans for the removal of the blade and what’s going to be salvaged,” she said.
BSEE issued a suspension order last week, which shut down the operation of turbines and installation of new ones. The agency also issued a “preservation order” to safeguard the evidence that’s collected.
As of last month, Vineyard Wind had 10 turbines spinning and sending power to the Massachusetts grid.
Kim did not have an answer readily available on whether the suspension order extended to the installation of monopile and foundation structures. She said there was specific guidance on monopiles in the order, which has not been shared with the public.
She could not provide a timeline for when the suspension may lift, as they are too early in the investigation to know.
“I would not like to estimate a time at this moment. I think there’s a lot of information that needs to continue to be collected,” Kim said.
Gordon Carr, the director of the New Bedford Port Authority, confirmed there are no barge movements on the vessel schedule at this time, which would indicate the transit of turbine components for offshore installation.
Other vessels, which bring the components in for staging and storage at the Marine Commerce Terminal, are still scheduled. This week, for example, more tower components arrived.
“My presumption is the barges will remain, and it will be an opportunity for them to replenish the components on the yard,” Carr said, explaining the terminal grew sparse as Vineyard Wind hit a steady flow of offshore construction during the fairer summer weather.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said he hopes the incident does not cause a serious delay in construction, but said the terminal has the capacity to accommodate the components as they wait for construction to resume.
The updates Vineyard Wind has released to date have not done much to allay the ire and upset expressed both locally and on social media.
Those already skeptical and opposed to offshore wind see the incident as proof that the industry is harmful to the environment and unreliable. Those who support the industry are emphasizing that such incidents are rare, and that offshore wind, when developed responsibly, is a critical energy resource amid climate change.
The Sierra Club was the latest environmental group to issue a statement. Nancy Pyne, the organization’s senior adviser for offshore wind, on Friday said she was concerned about Vineyard Wind’s delay in providing notice to Nantucket officials and the public, and urged developers to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely impact the emergence of offshore wind as a critical solution for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” Pyne wrote in a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation. We advocate for offshore wind projects that ensure environmental protection, labor rights, and local community benefits.”
Mayor Mitchell, a longtime proponent of offshore wind, shared a similar two-pronged message.
“It’s really unfortunate that there are pieces of blade washing up on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, especially at the height of tourist season. That’s not good,” Mitchell said. “All that said, this was a very rare event. The offshore wind industry has been around since the early ’90s.”
“I think there will be some anti-wind folks who are equipped to point this out, ‘I told you so, this doesn’t work,’” Mitchell said. “People need to understand this is not a reflection of the industry’s prospects in the United States.”
A GE Haliade-X blade of the same model size, 13-megawatts, was damaged in May in the Dogger Bank offshore project in the United Kingdom. A GE official this week said they see the Vineyard Wind incident and that in the UK as “very likely disconnected.” The former was caused by an installation issue.
The Haliade-X model was tested at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Charlestown location. Blade testing is part of the overall turbine certification process, and the center participates by providing test data on blade models.
A spokesperson for MassCEC, which is a quasi-state agency, said he could not provide information on the megawatt size of the model they tested (the Haliade-X comes in different sizes), and referred The Light to GE Vernova.
As of Friday, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have not responded to further questions.
How events unfolded
Updates to the public from Vineyard Wind and GE were initially slow to come, but since Monday, Vineyard Wind has provided at least a daily update. Following is a chronology of how events unfolded.
Saturday, July 13: One of the three blades on turbine AW38 sustained damage in the evening while undergoing testing. U.S. Coast Guard issued a notice to mariners to exercise caution due to debris in the area. Soon after, BSEE issued a verbal suspension order, requiring operations to cease at the site.
Sunday, July 14: Some fishermen encountered and captured pictures of the damaged blade.
Monday, July 15: BSEE issued a written suspension order, and Vineyard Wind published a press release announcing to the public the turbine incident.
Tuesday, July 16: Nantucket residents reported finding large and small foam and fiberglass debris scattered across several beaches. Vineyard Wind dispatched contractors and employees to help town staff with cleanup, filling trucks with debris. Nantucket closed affected beaches to swimming.
Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller responds to comments and questions at the Nantucket Select Board meeting on July 17 after a turbine blade sustained damage a few days prior.
Wednesday, July 17: Beaches reopened for swimming while cleanups continued. That evening during a Nantucket Select Board meeting, Vineyard Wind and GE officials responded to questions and heard impassioned comments from residents, who are concerned about health and environmental impacts. Vineyard Wind’s CEO Klaus Moeller apologized to the local community, stating he was “truly sorry.”
Thursday, July 18: A significant remaining portion (about 300 feet) of the 350-foot-long blade detached from the turbine and fell into the water just before 7 a.m. Vessels were on site to retrieve debris. More workers were dispatched to Nantucket in anticipation of more debris coming ashore.
Friday, July 19: According to Nantucket town officials, the 300-foot blade piece fell to the ocean floor. Nantucket officials filed an agenda for a meeting this month to discuss potential litigation against Vineyard Wind over costs incurred from the blade failure.
Vineyard Wind requests debris be reported at 833-609-5768.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
