...Oh, how angry Nantucket must be!

(With apologies to "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean")

So far, well...they're pretty pissed, along with many other former bleeding blue progressive-voting New England wind advocates.

The mood is decidedly sour after a month of little progress on addressing the Vineyard Wind blade failure and its aftermath.

Vineyard Wind continues to issue more warnings of fiberglass and styrofoam shards for the ocean of southern New England . Federal government is permitting this precedent setting disaster. The projects must be immediately shut down and dismantled. #mapoli # Ack4whales pic.twitter.com/8d81kmU05W

— Mary Chalke (@ChalkeMary40147) August 13, 2024

The blade remnant that Ms Chalke was describing, which was still dangling from the turbine after a month of shedding various pieces into the ocean without any removal plan in place, finally gave up the ghost this past Sunday. It fell to a watery grave a mere two days after owner Vineyard Wind and blade manufacturer GE Vernova had finally announced a plan to remove said damaged blade.

The fact that it fell as opposed to being removed meant, of course, that warnings to watch for more crap hitting the beaches were again issued to islanders weary of fiberglass shards.

Portions of Vineyard Wind's damaged blade that have been hanging from the turbine for nearly a month plunged into the ocean early Sunday morning amidst heavy winds in what the town of Nantucket described as a "controlled detachment."

The latest development at the wind farm 15 miles southwest of the island came as Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the turbine, announced a formal plan late Friday to remove the damaged blade from the turbine.

"Early this morning, portions of the remaining hanging sections of the Vineyard Wind turbine blade detached from the hub," the town of Nantucket announced in a statement released Sunday evening. "The controlled detachment follows a series of exercises conducted late last week to pitch the blade, which, in combination with storm winds, led to the safe separation of the sections below the root of the blade. Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova are currently assessing the situation to determine if any remaining sections pose a risk of detachment. The root of the blade, still attached to the turbine, is being monitored, and we are informed that plans are in place for its removal. Vineyard Wind has maritime crews on site to secure and contain any debris immediately."

Depending on wind direction, the town cautioned that more debris could potentially wash up on Nantucket beaches in the coming hours or days.

Neighboring states were affected by the outflow of materials from the Vineyard Wind failure as it hit the water stream and floated on its way. There is a significant backlash growing in those areas and a revitalized opposition. One of the dire consequences that anti-wind forces had used in their arguments against the projects had actually come to pass, and the numbers and impact of a single blade - one blade - hitting the ocean were staggering, even before this latest section of the shattered blade went into the Atlantic.

The recent spate of offshore wind turbine blade failures should be a wake-up call for both the industry and our policymakers.

Recently, a Vineyard Wind turbine off Nantucket suffered a catastrophic failure of a 350-foot-long fiberglass turbine blade that dumped 110,000 pounds of fiberglass, epoxy and foam into the ocean. The Vineyard Wind project has been ordered by the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to cease operation and halt further construction activities pending an investigation.

Folks who live in, say, Rhode Island, as the author above does, are watching as the Vineyard Wind single-blade catastrophe slowly unfolds, looking back at what's on the drawing board for their own proposed offshore wind projects, and saying, "Oh, HA-YULL, no!"

He also notes that Nantucket was all in, baby...until they weren't, thanks to the rudest of reality checks. Nantucket had been sold a bill of goods from the get-go. But it's too late once the pylons start going in. The blade shattering was the icing on the BS cake.

...In fact, Nantucket had been an early advocate of offshore wind, signing a “Good Neighbor Agreement” that would give them $16 million in compensation. They were promised that the turbines wouldn’t be visible (they are) and there would be no impact on island tourism. The town council has scheduled a meeting to discuss litigation against Vineyard Wind.

The blades for Revolution Wind will be even larger than the ones in Vineyard Wind, with lengths 3.5 times that of the wing on a 747. The implications of such massive components failing are dire, both for safety and the environment. The U.S. Coast Guard posted a warning of a 300-foot piece of debris floating offshore. Colliding with that could easily result in a sinking and loss of life.

Industry statistics paint a grim picture: the failure rate for smaller blades is 0.54% per year (roughly 3,800 blades fail annually). The failure rate for these new gigantic blades is much larger due to the significantly higher mechanical loads and fatigue stresses, especially near the blade tips and leading edges.

There will be 1,000 turbines off Rhode Island, each taller than any building in Boston. With three blades apiece, even at the lower failure rate we can expect about 16 massive blade failures annually. This is unacceptable. Many of these projects are feeding power to New York or Connecticut, yet they’ve been sited off Rhode Island’s beaches, not the Hamptons.

It's funny how the viewpoints shift when there is hard data and a freshly opened set of eyes.

There's pressure building on the opposing side as well - financial from the state, the wind companies, and GE, from environmental groups (who are deeply invested in offshore wind), and, most assuredly, from worried progressive political figures, frightened by the specter of a Trump presidency and all that means for the future of Green grifting. The Biden administration has to have a wind win somewhere. Their great Green Grift is going to go up in smoke if they don't have something to show for it pretty soon, and everything else has been a bust.

...Clean energy advocates had in recent months hailed Vineyard Wind’s construction progress as a sign of “offshore wind’s bright future” despite ongoing setbacks faced by the industry, including rising interest rates, inflation, and organized pushback by fossil-fuel-linked groups. The project, a joint venture between the energy company Avangrid and Danish investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, is expected to produce 800 megawatts of electricity when fully operational, enough to power about 400,000 homes.

Last month’s turbine failure, which happened during a routine testing, has thrown a wrench in the project’s otherwise swiftly advancing progress. Nantucket residents have expressed concerns over the truckloads of debris washing ashore, and a local board meeting last month attracted hundreds of participants calling for greater accountability from the company. Vineyard Wind representatives assured locals that none of the debris is toxic and reaffirmed the company’s commitment to cleaning up all the waste. “We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward,” Vineyard Wind told the Boston Herald.

The company’s blade failure also arrives just months before the 2024 presidential election. Some observers worry the incident will add fodder for opponents to offshore wind projects, including former President Donald Trump, who has vowed to terminate approvals for the clean energy source.

The feds want this project moving, stat.

And so it shall. The turbine towers must rise even if blades shan't grace them...just yet.

Vineyard Wind said it has obtained federal approval to resume construction of the wind farm – work that was suspended following the partial collapse of a previously installed turbine blade on July 13.

A press release issued at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had given the developers of the wind farm permission to resume the installation of towers and nacelles (which sit atop the tower and convert wind energy into electricity), but a suspension remains in effect for turbine blades and power generation.

Vineyard Wind is a 62-turbine project and only 24 had been completed at the time of the accident. Work is resuming on the remaining 38 turbines but blades cannot be installed nor power produced under the terms of the revised suspension order. Of the 24 completed turbines, 11 were generating electricity at the time of the incident and 13, including the one that broke, were undergoing testing.

In a joint press release, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, said a barge departed the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal Tuesday morning for the wind farm carrying turbine components, including several tower sections and one nacelle.

“The vessel will also carry a rack of three blades solely for the purpose of ensuring safe and balanced composition for the transport,” the press release said, adding that the blades will not be installed and will be returned to New Bedford later in the week.  

Meanwhile, on the island, drip, crash, splash, repeat...

🚨 Vineyard Wind Turbine Blade Failure Update - August 15, 1 PM🚨

Some additional debris has entered the water. Vineyard Wind is actively monitoring and addressing this debris and working on a plan to remove the blade root & sea floor cleanup.
🔗 Details: https://t.co/ewsW0tBaT1 pic.twitter.com/BgTD7l0gjb

— Town of Nantucket (@TownofNantucket) August 15, 2024

...and second thoughts tinged with a heaping cupful of regret. Entreaties from former believers or even indifferent residents who ask for time to sort this out - weigh further potential consequences before moving forward now that early actual consequences have smacked them in the shops. 

Concerns that no one involved with Vineyard Wind gives a rat's patootie about.

...Breanne, 32, describes herself as a climate activist who backs the transition from fossil fuels “100 percent.” But last month’s accident left her shaken. She’s worried about the marine life ingesting the wreckage and its longer-term impact on the waters around Nantucket.

“We don’t want to be an experiment,” she said. “We just want to halt any more turbines until we get to the bottom of how we do this better.”

...Jesse Sandole, 37, was born and raised on the island and owns a fish market there. He has no issue with building wind turbines on land but strongly opposes what he calls the “full-scale industrialization of the ocean.” He’s concerned about what will happen once the turbines reach the end of their usable life in several decades and how they will be decommissioned.

...“The circumstances surrounding Nantucket’s relationship with the Vineyard Wind project have changed in light of this incident,” Mohr said.

Gaven Norton, 33, owns a surf school on the south shore. The accident tanked his business for days: First, the beaches were closed. Then, people canceled their lessons because they were afraid of fiberglass fragments in the water or on the sand. “It killed the whole week,” he said.

Before the accident, he hadn’t thought much about the offshore turbines that one day just seemed to appear on the horizon. “Now it seems that people are asking more questions,” he said. “That’s a good thing.”

I'm sorry, girlfriend - you are the experimental guinea pigs. Someone always gets to go first.

That math is so awful when you do the multiplication for all the blades X turbines X projects = FUGLY.

And that was one blade.