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Walkers enjoying a quiet stroll in the Welsh countryside captured a shocking sight on Sunday, after a wind turbine burst into flames before exploding. Nick Blasdale, 61, and his wife Alison, 59, were left stunned when they saw burning parts of a turbine fall more than 100ft to the ground. Firefighters were called to the blaze at Blaen Bowi Wind Farm near Newcastle Emlyn, Pembrokeshire at 11.46am, but could only watch and make sure passersby didn't get too close. Alison said: 'We watched the top section burst into flames then drop off whilst still burning then explode when it hit...

A wind turbine at a northern Colorado wind farm folded in half and caught fire Thursday morning, startling neighbors who heard banging noises prior to the collapse. The incident was reported at 8 a.m. No injuries were reported. Oil and grease from the generator caught fire after the tower's collapse. ... Personnel from the Peetz and Crook all-volunteer fire departments responded. Employees from Invenergy - a Chicago-based company which first owned the wind turbine field and now operates it for the current owner, ClearWay Energy - were already at the site when firefighters arrived, according to Peetz Fire Protction District...

PAXTON [Illinois] — When a wind turbine collapsed last Thursday east of Paxton, a substantial amount of oil spilled from the turbine hub into the ground. Ford County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Terry Whitebird said Austin, Texas-based RWE Renewables, which operates the Prairie Trail Wind Farm, where the turbine collapsed, filed a report with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency about the spillage, and he received a copy of the report. Whitebird has been on site and said a crew is ready to begin dismantling the turbine but has to wait until the area dries out from Wednesday’s rains.

The taller the wind turbine, the harder they fall. And they sure are falling. Wind turbine failures are on the uptick, from Oklahoma to Sweden and Colorado to Germany, with all three of the major manufacturers admitting that the race to create bigger turbines has invited manufacturing issues, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The turbine was torn apart by the raging winds and collapsed to the ground . Families in a nearby village in South Wales said the bang sounded like thunder . Manufacturers Nordex launched an investigation after it went into overdrive. ... The turbine, which was almost the height of St Paul's Cathedral, was torn apart by the raging winds and eventually collapsed to the ground ... The energy generators are supposed to automatically switch off after it detects winds of 55mph. ... villagers said they were worried over the safety of the turbines following the collapse.

But on Monday, scientists from Michigan State University offered their blueprints of an innovative way to address this issue. They developed a new form of wind turbine material that combines glass fibers with both plant-derived and synthetic polymers, which refer to long chains of molecules. The mixture is called a composite resin, and its hype lies in the fact that it can be recycled a lot more easily than pure fiberglass can. Oh, and here's the best part: It can also be turned into delicious gummy bears.

A 400-foot-tall wind turbine in Gloucester suffered a mechanical failure Sunday morning causing one of the turbine’s blades to fall to the ground. The wind turbine is at Applied Materials on Dory Road in Blackburn Industrial Park. Gloucester Fire Department received a report of the incident at approximately 7 a.m. Sunday, according to a news release. The fire department and the city are working with Applied Materials to establish an appropriate isolation area around the turbine to ensure the safety of the structure and people around it.

CROWELL, Texas - A North Texas wind farm is one turbine down thanks to what officials believe was a devastating lightning strike to one of the massive structures on Friday afternoon. Videos from witnesses and firefighters showed the wind turbine generator ablaze and disintegrate in the sky over Crowell, Texas. Doppler radar indicated there was plenty of lightning strikes around the Foard City wind facility before firefighters received the call about the high-altitude fire. Crews with the Crowell Volunteer Fire Department responded, but Fire Chief Perry Shaw said there was little his firefighters could do to put the fire out....

A U.S. wind power developer pleaded guilty to multiple violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act after its wind turbine blades allegedly killed more than 135 bald and golden eagles across the country. The company, ESI Energy, pleaded guilty Tuesday to three counts of violations in the form of golden eagle deaths. Prosecutors said the birds were documented to have been killed by blunt force trauma after being struck by its wind turbine blades at its facilities in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits. As part of the settlement, ESI “acknowledged that at...

Villagers were woken by a 300ft wind turbine crashing down on a Welsh mountainside - after it was blown over during storms which brought 50pmh winds. The £20million turbine - double the height of Nelson's Column - snapped apart and blades crumpled in raging wind. Families in the nearby village of Gilfach Goch, near Bridgend, South Wales, told how it sounded like 'thunder and lightning'. It woke them at around 6.50am on Monday morning and echoed around the valley below. The 29-turbine Pant Y Wal wind farm opened in 2013 and makes enough power for 19,000 homes - until one...

BERLIN (AP) — Officials in Germany are investigating why a huge wind turbine collapsed just hours before it was due to be officially inaugurated. The turbine, whose rotor blades reach a height of 239 meters (784 feet), toppled over late Wednesday in a forest near the western town of Haltern. German news agency dpa reported Thursday that police were not currently suspecting sabotage.

Bladeless turbines that waggles like a dashboard toy could be the wind-harnessing tool of the future as they move within the range of vibration of the wind to generate electricity. The design recently won the approval of Norway’s state energy company Equinor, which named Vortex on a list of the 10 most exciting startups within the energy sector

In an epic case of poor foresight, the “clean, green” wind industry forgot to come up with a plan for what to do with wind turbine blades after they stop working. Like all things, they get old and stop functioning properly after a while, but the plastic used to make them lasts virtually “forever.” The industry has found ways to recycle the steel used to build the towers, but not the fiberglass (a type of plastic) used to build the blades of the high-tech windmills. Now that the first generation of wind turbines has reached the end of their “lives,”...

Wind energy companies will have the option of using decommissioned wind turbine blades as backfill material when reclaiming surface coal mine sites soon, thanks to a new bill signed into law earlier this year. But first, the state needs to set the rules. ... The blades.. are made of fiberglass. Fiberglass is a tricky material that can’t be recycled or easily repurposed. And as utility companies look to replace aging wind turbines, the machines’ blades are being buried in stacks at a handful of landfills around the country, ... old mine sites to suddenly become a landfills, which could affect...

Funny, no one seemed to consider what to do with the massive amount of wind turbine blades once they reached the end of their lifespan. Thus, the irony of the present-day Green Energy Movement is the dumping of thousands of tons of “non-recyclable” supposedly renewable wind turbine blades in the country’s landfills. Who would have thought? What’s even worse, is that the amount of wind turbine blades slated for waste disposal is forecasted to quadruple over the next fifteen years as a great deal more blades reach their 15-20 year lifespan. Furthermore, the size and length of the newly installed...

The Boston-based company discovered an "oxidation issue" that could cause distress on blade components of the HA gas turbine. GE launched the HA turbine in 2016 and has received orders for more than 80 turbines, more than half of which have already shipped to customers in the U.S., Europe and Asia. "Obviously, this was a frustrating development, for us, as well as for our customers," GE Power CEO Russell Stokes wrote in a LinkedIn post. "But we have identified a fix and have been working proactively with HA operators to address impacted turbines." "A few weeks ago, there was an...

An energy company says it's trying to determine why a 113-foot-long blade fell off a windmill in central New York. [...] Town official say they believe a bolt may have failed on the 187-ton windmill, one of 20 located at the Fenner Wind Farm, which was built in 2001 on a hill 15 miles east of Syracuse. ...

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. That sounds like a joke, but that’s actually more or less the model of a new wind turbine prototype. Instead of blades that turn in the breeze, the turbine is just a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet from the ground and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind thrums by. The Spanish engineers who founded Vortex Bladeless in 2010 said they were inspired by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster (maybe not the best pitch for clean energy to a disaster-wary...

An 80-metre wind turbine has collapsed on a mountainside near Fintona in County Tyrone. The turbine was one of eight on the Screggagh wind farm on Murley mountain. It is not clear what caused the giant structure to collapse, but people in the industry said it was a highly unusual event especially as winds were light at the time. The turbine, valued at over £500,000, collapsed on Friday evening, scattering debris over a wide area.

TYBEE ISLAND, Georgia — Endangered piping plovers blend into the background of sandy beaches like Tybee's, where these small shorebirds are known to visit. First decimated by the use of their feathers in women's hats in the late 1800s, plovers have since suffered from having to compete with humans for beach space. Now only 60 or so breeding pairs remain in the smallest of their three known populations. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has identified global warming and wind turbines as emerging threats to these birds.