WESTERN ONTARIO: Wind farm up and running after turbine snapped in half

By Connor Lynch and Patrick Meagher
MERLIN — A wind farm is back up and running after a turbine on it collapsed onto itself on Jan. 19.
The turbine, located in a farmer’s field, east of Merlin (pop. 750), in south Chatham-Kent, buckled and snapped in half after a turbine blade collided with the more than 300 ft.-high hub. The top-half of the tower and blades crashed to the ground.
A local farmer said the story going around is that the one of the blades was bending from the wind and made contact with the tower.
The wind farm, owned by TerraForm Power, was operating again on March 29, according to company spokesperson Chad Reed. At the time of the incident, all 52 turbines in the project were taken offline.
The incident sparked renewed calls by local PC MPPs — Rick Nicholls and Monte McNaughton — for the Ontario government to impose a “moratorium” on new area wind turbine projects.
This could be the third case of a wind turbine on a commercial project collapsing in Canada. There are about 6,500 operating turbines across the country. With more than 2,500 wind turbines, Ontario has more than any other province. The highest concentration is in Chatham-Kent.
The first wind turbine on a commercial project to topple over occurred at Canada’s first commercial wind farm in Alberta in 2012. A blade struck the 80-ft. 18-year-old steel-lattice tower and it buckled overnight. The second collapse occurred in Nova Scotia in 2016. Maintenance workers had replaced a large component and shortly after were evacuated before the turbine buckled and crashed to the ground.
The Caithness Windfarm Information Forum is a Scottish group that compiles a global list of wind turbine accidents. It reports these wind turbine incidents in Canada:
Turbines shut down after turbine parts fell off: 8
Turbines catching fire (typically electrical): 6
Turbines shut down after being struck by lightning: 4
Turbines collapsing: 3
Turbines shut down due to “ice throw”: 2
Of the 8 cases of pieces falling off turbines, 3 incidents occurred in Ontario:
In 2009, an 8 ft. long blade piece from a 60-ft. tall turbine crashed through a neighbour’s roof in Chatham-Kent.
In 2014, a resident of Ontario’s Howard Township found an 18-inch piece of wind turbine blade on his property.
In 2015, the municipality of Bluewater, in south Huron, reported complaints of wind turbine parts falling from wind turbines.