Nordex investigates collapse of recently installed big turbine

German wind turbine maker Nordex SE (ETR:NDX1) is looking in all directions in its investigation into what caused the collapse of a N149/4.0-4.5 turbine last week at a wind farm in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The turbine was installed on a hybrid tower of 164 metres in January at the 9-MW Haltern AV9, and put online in March. On September 29 it almost completely collapsed. There have been no injuries.

Yesterday, Nordex said an interdisciplinary group of experts have launched a detailed analysis of the components, especially tower segments and rotor blades. The bottom box data will soon be analysed. For the time being, there are no indications as to the causes for the incident and the investigation is expected “to take some time”.

The site of the incident has been completely secured and Nordex has also shut down temporarily all turbines of identical configuration.

The German company announced the launch of the N149/4.0-4.5 model in September 2017 and installed the first 4.5-MW N149 turbine as part of a wind farm repowering project to the south of Hamburg roughly a year later.

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!