Wind Turbine Failures of This Last Week in Michigan...

[XLFD]

...And What They Mean to Us in Mason County

The forceful winds of a winter's snowstorm looks to have caused the failure of a wind turbine on the eastern side of the state.  Failure is perhaps not a very strong term, the shaft and blades came down crashing to the ground with considerable force, wrecking those structures.

It should be noted that back when the Lake Winds project was still under judicial review, Mason County 51st Circuit Court Judge Richard I. Cooper relied on the wind company's assurances in deeming the close proximity of sour and natural gas lines to the 500 foot turbines would not be duly hazardous. 

This concern was raised early in 2011 in the debate by the residents of Riverton and Summit Townships in the CARRE group:  "A group of residents says at least half a dozen of the windmills are within falling distance of a gas line. And they say if a turbine falls it could cause a pipeline to break with the risk of an explosion."   It wasn't until after lawsuits and the end of 2014 that county officials looked into creating larger setbacks for dwellings and gas lines.

In this instance Mlive reports:  "Oliver Township Planning Commission Chairman Brion Dickens said the turbine is thought to have fallen over about 5 a.m. Thursday. The nearest home is about 2,200 feet away, he said.  

"The zoning ordinance we have in place prevented anything from happening to anybody or anything," Dickens said."

Were we here at Mason County able to claim the same thing.  Were this isolated it may be just a minor note, but in Huron Township, another failure occurred just the previous Friday as seen in the second picture that follows.  The stories and pictures of both are both being covered by the Huron Daily Tribune and reproduced in part for our readership below.

OLIVER TOWNSHIP — A nearly 400-foot, 485,000-pound wind turbine has fallen down on a farm field at the site of the state’s first utility-scale wind project.

Oliver Township Supervisor Larry Krohn said it came down at about 5:20 a.m. in the middle of the field.

“He just heard a noise and it sounded like a tree cracking or something and a little rumble of thunder when it hit the ground,” Krohn said of the resident’s account of the situation.

The fallen turbine is part of Exelon Wind Generation’s 32-turbine Harvest Wind Farm, the first utility-scale wind project built in Michigan. It began operation in 2008.

Crews are still investigating how a 160-foot, 7-ton wind turbine blade broke in eastern Huron County, leaving it dangling like a shoelace and torqued around the structure.  The damaged blade is on one of DTE Energy’s 40 turbines in Sigel Township, near Section Line and Finkel roads. DTE says it happened at about 3:15 p.m. Friday.

DTE says the turbine automatically shut down after the incident. The utility expects an “extended outage” for the turbine during repairs and while “extensive top to bottom inspections of the entire turbine are conducted.”

http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article_73293122-dbed-11e5-a5bb-...

http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article_8bea162a-daff-11e5-a760-...

[Willy]

What's going to happen when these monsters start aging? Not only will they fall apart but the expense that will be incurred to fix them will empty consumers pockets making power rates sky rocket. Our children and grand children will be paying the price for this slime green idea.

[MED]

Thank goodness we were able to keep 'em out of the lake. But then again, when they fail in the lake, they'd sink and maybe create some new fish habitat!

[AQUAMAN]

Thank goodness we have so many (65)? new wind turbines in Mason County, where few are 2200' away from homes, more like 500'. Also that Consumers Energy kept it's word again, and reduced residents' electric bills drastically, over -50% less, for the favor of building them here. Just like the PSP, Pumped Storage Project, on Lk. Michigan. NOT NOT NOT!

[Willy]

Don't forget the bribe money Consumers paid to the County for the favorable votes that would allow them to shove those things so far up taxpayers as_es that not even the blades can be seen.