Australia should take actions to avoid wind turbine failure and learn from each failure that occurs, a leading academic says.

(Above image: A wind turbine collapsed after a storm at the Berrybank Wind Farm in western Victoria last week. Image source: Wind Farm Living via Facebook)

During an interview conducted after the recent collapse of a wind turbine in Victoria, Associate Professor Amin Heidarpour, an associate professor in structural engineering and director of the Enterprise and Engagement team in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Monash University, spoke with Sourceable about the causes of wind turbine failure and how these may be mitigated.

Heidarpour says that the need to avoid failures should not be underestimated.

“Wind turbines are basically part of our infrastructure assets in the renewable energy sector,” Heidarpour said.

“They can turn the power of wind into electricity which we use to power our home and businesses. So wind turbine failure may disrupt their (wind farm’s) efficient functionality and affect the required electricity.

“The consequences of wind turbine failure depend on the cause of failure. For example, if fire is the cause of failure, then its consequences can be severe.

“Injuries and fatalities due to wind turbine failure have rarely been reported since they are usually placed in remote areas.

“However, we should not forget that workers in wind farms are potentially exposed to a variety of serious hazards such as electric shock, and thermal burn hazards that can cause injury of death. But we believe that proper training and certification of all the workers can mitigate the consequences of failures.”

Turbine Failure Rate

As mentioned above, Heidarpour’s comments came after a wind turbine earlier this month fell 112 meters and crashed to the ground at Berrybank Wind Farm 80 km west of Geelong.

The farm’s owner, Vestas Wind Systems, has indicated that a preliminary investigation to find the cause is focused on lightning strikes and severe storms.

No one was hurt during the incident. However, the Victorian Opposition has called for an audit of wind farm safety across that state.

The incident comes as turbine failure has been cause for some concern over recent decades.

Worldwide research by renewable energy underwriter GCube in 2013 found that of the approximately 700,000 blades that were in operation at the time, around 3,800 failed each year.

This represents a global failure rate of around 0.54 percent of all wind turbines annually.

In Australia, little data is available regarding overall blade failure rates.

However, some incidents have occurred.

For example:

• In 2019, a blade broke and fell to the ground from a V136-3.6 MW turbine at the Lal Lal Wind Farm near Ballarat after being struck by lightning.
• In 2020, a newly installed turbine at Tilt Renewables’ Dundonnell Wind Farm in Victoria dropped a 73 meter, 15-tonne blade – a phenomenon which investigators later put down to bolts becoming loose.
• In 2022, the 89MW Alinta Wind Farm in Western Australia needed to be temporarily shut down after a turbine collapsed – buckling in half and falling into a canola field. This was caused by a crack in the steel tower.
• In 2023, a turbine at the Cullerin Range Wind Farm in regional NSW caught fire due to overheating. No definitive causes of the overheating was found during investigations.

Fortunately, none of the above incidents resulted in injury or loss of life. Furthermore, human injury to wind turbine failure is not common on account of the remote location of many wind farms.

However, it should be noted that human injury and fatality relating to wind farms sometimes occurs during construction, installation and maintenance.

In 2023, for example,  36-year-old construction worker Jess Patience was killed when a turbine blade fell and crushed him at the Golden Plains Wind Farm in regional Victoria. It is understood that the turbine blade was being prepared for installation whilst at the ground level when the accident occurred.

The comments also come as Australia is undergoing a massive rollout of wind and other renewable energy assets in order to meet Commonwealth targets of 82 percent of the nation’s electricity being generated through renewable sources by 2030.

As part of this, Environment Minister Chris Bowen indicated in 2022 that the nation needed to install an average of forty 7 MW wind turbines each month.

(Wind energy will play a critical role in meeting Australian Government targets of 82 percent energy generation by 2030. To achieve this, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said that 40 new turbines need to be added each month. Image source: Queensland Government)

Remote location should not lead to complacency

Whilst many wind farms are located in remote areas, Heidarpour stresses that this should not detract from their importance.

Instead, turbine should be afforded similar attention to other forms of critical infrastructure.

This is particularly important as advanced materials and design techniques have enabled larger machines to be installed. These advanced materials need to be adequately understood by engineers and others prior to the turbines being installed on wind farms.

During operation, routine maintenance and inspections are needed so as to ensure that the safety and structural integrity of the turbines is not adversely impacted by extreme weather.

Six Possible Failure Causes

Asked about potential causes of blade failure, Heidarpour lists six potential failure mechanisms.

These include:

• surface damage to the blade
• structural cracks which may lead to failure of the blades
• lightning strikes
• manufacturing defects
• fire; and
• operational errors and mistakes.

Design and maintenance considerations

Asked about considerations which are important during design and maintenance, Heidarpour says that wind turbines are subject to several conditions over their life.

These include environmental and mechanical loading, deformation caused by wind or rain, soil erosion, high moisture and variations in temperature.

During design, engineers therefore need to consider a mix of environmental and mechanical loads. Also important is future-proofing assets by making them resilient to climate change impacts.

When planning and undertaking maintenance, it is important to have a detailed understanding of potential failure mechanisms for wind turbines and their blades.

(Associate Professor Amin Heidarpour. Image source: Monash University)

Learn from each failure

Going forward, Heidarpour says it is important to learn from each failure and to update current practice.

Such learning can occur through:

• analysis of damaged blades to explore how blades may have failed
• full-scale testing of blades in a laboratory to identify relationships between the blade failure mechanism and the different types of loading to which the structure may be exposed during it life: and
• computational modelling to model a mix of different loadings which may apply on the structure.

Monash University operates an expansive testing facility enabling mechanical testing at different scales under various loading conditions. These range from testing at material scale to large scale testing.

Heidarpour says the importance of learning from failure should not be underestimated.

“We need to learn from each failure and to update current practice to mitigate the consequences of future failures,” Heidarpour said.

“I would like to see that the cause of this recent failure is accurately discovered and that learned lessons from this failure are shared with experts so that they can consider it in their future design.

“The authorities and owners of such assets (which fail) should approach the experts as soon as possible (following a failure incident) and put their heads together to try to discover the cause of the failure. They should collaborate with each other to mitigate the consequences of failure in the future.”

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