Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

On Sunday (7/14), Capt. Carl Bois, of the fishing charter Topspin out of Nantucket, told the Current he noticed a significant amount of debris in the Vineyard Wind lease area.

“There was so much debris at the wind farm,” Bois said. “We covered many miles and only saw the debris at the wind farm site: big sheets of fiberglass with foam core and lots of loose foam.”

On Saturday night (7/13) the Coast Guard warned Mariners as follows: “Coast Guard received a report of 03 floating debris 10 meters by 2 meters in the vicinity of approximately 26 NM SE of Marthas Vineyard and 22 NM SW of Nantucket in position 40 59.559N 070 25.404W. All marines are requested to use extreme caution while transiting the area.“

On Monday (7/15), Vineyard Wind confirmed that a turbine blade incident occurred on 7/13: “On Saturday evening, Vineyard Wind experienced blade damage on a wind turbine in its offshore development area. No personnel or third parties were in the vicinity of the turbine at the time, and all employees of Vineyard Wind and its contractors are safe and secure.”

On 7/16, Vineyard Wind issued another statement advising that they were deploying teams to Nantucket to clean up debris from the incident.

Comments:

• Not a good look for the first large-scale offshore wind project in the US.
• It’s unclear what the status of operations was at the time of the incident.
• Vineyard Wind seems to be passing the buck a bit when they note that “GE, as the project’s turbine and blade manufacturer and installation contractor, will now be conducting the analysis into the root cause of the incident.” While GE’s findings are critical, Vineyard Wind, as operator, is fully responsible and accountable for the incident and should be leading the analysis.
• Was their a third party review of the turbine design?
• Was the incident reported to BSEE, the safety regulator for offshore wind? State and local government?
• BSEE and the Coast Guard should ensure that Vineyard Wind’s findings and their own independent report are made publicly available in a timely manner. Ditto for Safety Alerts.
• What other incidents have occurred during offshore wind facility construction and operations?
• In 2017, Vineyard Wind requested to defer providing the full amount of the required financial assurance until year 15 of actual operations. That request was denied, but was approved when resubmitted in 2021. The regulations have now been revised to allow such deferrals of financial assurance on all offshore wind projects.

Vineyard Wind is a joint venture between Avangrid, a Spanish company, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. They were