A turbine is offline at Vattenfall’s Aberdeen Bay offshore wind farm – home to the world's most powerful machines and bitterly opposed by Donald Trump – after what local reports said was a lightning strike.
Manufacturer MHI Vestas confirmed to Recharge that it is investigating the cause of damage to one of the turbine’s blades after its monitoring picked up the problem at the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC) in early February.
“Weather depending, we’re planning to replace the blade sometime in the coming week,” said a spokesman for the company.
A report in the local Press & Journal in Aberdeen cited a source claiming the damage was caused by a lightning strike.
The EOWDC – opened last year by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon after a furious legal battle with Trump over damage to views from his golf course – is home to the world’s most powerful commercially-operating wind turbines, two MHI Vestas V164 8.8MW machines, and nine of the group’s 8.4MW versions.
Kevin Jones, site manager for the EOWDC, said: “Our regular monitoring of EOWDC components has identified damage to one of the blades on one of the wind turbines in the array. The cause of the damage will be investigated by manufacturer MHI Vestas Offshore Wind.
“The offshore works, which involve the replacement of the blade, are weather dependent. The rest of the wind farm is operating normally.”