Wind Turbine Rotor and Blades Fall -- Rugby, North Dakota

Update

March 24, 2011: The cause -- the bolts failed. Six other turbines in this particular wind farm have been shut down so bolts on the other turbines can be replaced. The wind farm has a total of 71 wind farms. It has been in operation less than a year (it was dedicated last October).

Original Post

Just when I thought I had heard everything, here's a new wrinkle in wind energy: the rotor and three blades recently fell from a wind turbine near Rugby, North Dakota.

A wind energy project in north-central North Dakota has resumed generating power, a spokeswoman said Monday, a week after the rotor and three giant blades on one of its towers plummeted to the ground.

The wind farm has 71 turbines perched atop steel towers just north of Rugby, about 150 miles northeast of Bismarck, and is capable of generating up to 149 megawatts of electricity. It was inspected after the March 14 accident and judged to be safe to resume operation, said Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables Inc. in Portland, Oregon. 

One can only wonder.