Turbine blade break under investigation at Australia’s biggest wind farm

Investigations are underway at the 923 megawatt (MW) MacIntyre wind farm in south-western Queensland, following a turbine blade break at the huge project in late December.

The incident at what is Australia’s largest operating wind farm happened less than three months after the project sent first power to the grid from its site in the Southern Downs, outside Warwick.

The 162 turbine Acciona Energía and Ark Energy project had connected 27 wind turbines to the grid by early October, with another 27 due to be exporting energy by Christmas.

The broken blade has not yet detached from the rest of the turbine. No injuries have been recorded in connection with the incident.

In an updated statement emailed to Renew Economy on Friday, Acciona said it has set up an exclusion zone around the affected turbine that will remain in place until visual inspections and investigations are complete.

As well as working to identify the root cause of the problem, Acciona says the MacIntyre site team is working with turbine supplier Nordex to find a way to remove the affected blade.

“Our investigation team are working with our turbine supplier to review all records specific to the affected wind turbine and blade,” said Acciona spokesperson Andrew Tshaikiwsky.

“The investigation and recovery process will take some time to conduct to ensure that gain a thorough understanding of what caused the blade failure.”

The MacIntyre wind farm has been neck-and-neck with Victoria’s 1,330 MW Golden Plains wind farm as the biggest in Australia, with MacIntyre in October taking the title of biggest in operation.

Both projects had been injecting small amounts to the grid, but both have now suffered minor setbacks to their commissioning process due to turbine blade problems.

Tag Energy’s Golden Plains was also the site of a devastating fatal accident in November, in which 36 year-old sub contractor Jess Patience was killed by a 22 tonne turbine blade.

The MacIntyre wind farm is a joint-venture between Acciona Energía and Ark Energy, a subsidiary of Korea Zinc, which will use some of project’s power to support its sister company, Sun Metals and the Townsville refinery’s decarbonisation plans.

The project also has offtake agreements with the Queensland government owned Stanwell Corporation and CleanCo totalling 550MW.
 
Acciona says it will continue to provide further updates on the turbine blade incident as new information becomes available.