A Vestas turbine at a MidAmerican Energy-owned wind farm in Adair County, Iowa, caught fire Tuesday in dramatic footage captured by local newscasts.
The 2MW Vestas V110 turbine was placed in service at the 310MW Arbor Hill Wind Farm, which uses 2MW and 4MW nameplate capacity turbines.
Local fire brigades from Adair and surrounding towns responded but could do little as they lacked equipment to reach the nacelle. Turbine hub heights at the Arbor Hill array reportedly reach 95 metres.
The fire eventually consumed the nacelle and one of the blades, with burning debris falling into surrounding cornfields that sent up plumes of smoke that could be seen for miles.
“We are very fortunate that this field had already been harvested,” Adair County emergency manager Robert Kempf told local media, otherwise the fire could have spread far beyond the single turbine.
The turbine fire stopped burning at around 1500 US central time, and there were no injuries.
Geoff Greenwood, communications director for MidAmerican, said: “Safety is our highest priority. We are working with the fire department and will work with the turbine manufacturer, Vestas-American Wind Technology, to determine what occurred.” The process will include a root cause analysis.
A spokesperson for Vestas told Recharge: “Once the turbine has been deemed safe to access, Vestas will work with the customer to determine the root cause.”
Greenwood confirmed a small number of turbines on the same circuit are currently offline, “but the remainder of the wind farm is operating normally”.
“An incident such as this is an extremely rare occurrence,” Greenwood said.
This is the second incident at a MidAmerican-owned wind farm in Iowa this year.
In February, a blade separated from the hub of a Siemens Gamesa 2.3MW turbine at the company’s Lundgren, Iowa project before landing in a field, MidAmerican told Recharge at that time.
No-one was injured and there was no damage to equipment at the 250MW array.
MidAmerican, part of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate whose CEO is billionaire Warren Buffett, in 2020 halted various Vestas turbines after blade incidents that it linked to built-in lightning protection systems.
