Wind Turbine Maintenance, Death, Decommissioning, and the Graveyard

You can't let these monstrosities spin very long without the parts wearing out - and then what? Read on...

~ 4 ton 3rd blade missing; flew off (pic: blade on ground, rt. center), fortunately not killing anyone

I was preparing to write about wind turbine maintenance and what happens when they wear out, when this story came up - it’s about another turbine blade flying off. I’m including the report on it below, after an earlier story, with a few comments. Then, maintenance and the end game - decommissioning, burying, and landfilling.

The first time I found out about wind turbine blades flying off the towers was in 2023 when I wrote “Wind Energy Problems”. A rancher in eastern Oregon had allowed PGE to install wind turbines on her property back in 2007. In 2023, a 7 ton blade flew off. If it had happened a few hours earlier, a ranch hand working in that area could have been killed. It was reported by oregonlive.com Jan 17 ’23, by Ted Sickinger, the Oregonian:

“PGE temporarily shuttered its Biglow Canyon wind farm last year after a massive blade from one of its towering turbines broke loose, launching the length of a football field and landing in a wheat field where workers had been delivering fertilizer hours earlier… The 135-foot piece of fiberglass, wood and metal weighs more than seven tons…Industry research suggests that damaged blade bolts due to stress and metal fatigue is a frequent cause of turbine failure. The newsroom’s investigation found that in the year prior to the blade throw, PGE found broken blade bolts on four turbines but kept them running while it awaited spare parts.”

lives at risk and terrified residents

A wind turbine blade flew off one of the 4 wind towers in Plymouth Mass 11/7/25. Coming off a 300’ tower, the 75-100 foot blade, which would weigh perhaps 4 tons, flew several hundred feet, over the top of some structures and a road. You can well imagine how disconcerting this was for the people that live nearby. This may have been a lack of up-to-date inspections and maintenance. CBS interviewed some residents:

“Kerri Costello lives in a house just a few hundred feet away. “All of a sudden I heard like a huge boom, like an explosion type of boom,” she said Friday night. “I don’t think I’ll sleep though, no I’m not going to sleep.

She is thankful no one, including herself or kids were injured. “Couldn’t help but thinking if that was turned a little bit more, it just went over there, I was literally sitting in my room in the window right there, my kids’ rooms are in the one right next to it, what if god forbid it ever went through,” she said…

David Daylor lives nearby and says he felt his house shake when the blade fell. “I heard this rumble, and I actually kind of felt it in my house. It felt like a mini earthquake,” Daylor said.

He said neighbors texted him and told him it was one of the turbine blades. “I almost didn’t believe it, I’m like no impossible, that’s our biggest fear is safety with these turbines,” Daylor said. “And sure enough I looked across and it was missing off the turbine.”

Daylor said the community was worried that something like this would happen when the turbines were installed roughly a decade ago.

“We brought up the safety concerns of just this, a turbine failure, what happens, we’ve all seen the videos online. I was honestly hoping I’d never see this here, but yet look behind us,” Daylor said.

Residents said they were told that the turbines wouldn’t need maintenance for 25 years after installation.”

Lance Reynolds, with the Boston Herald, also covered the story:

“Massachusetts is becoming familiar with turbine failures, with Friday’s blade collapse in Plymouth following a similar incident off the shores of Nantucket in the summer of 2024. The Plymouth Fire Department says it responded to a call from a “concerned neighbor” who noticed one of the three blades on a nearby wind turbine “suddenly missing,” around 2 p.m. Friday. Firefighters found the roughly 75- to 100-feet long blade hundreds of feet away from the base of the turbine, “resting in an open cranberry bog area.”

“The Plymouth turbine failure prompted critics to reflect on a wind turbine blade that tore apart on the Vineyard Wind project in July 2024, littering Nantucket’s beaches and waters with foam, fiberglass and other debris.

Nantucket officials reached a $10.5 million settlement this past July with GE Vernova, the company that manufactured the wind turbine blade that failed on the project.”

CBS/WBZ also linked a 2 minute video: double click it

now - about maintenance

Energy News Beat posted a detailed article on wind turbine maintenance on 11.5.25.

“A fresh report from IntelStor, that Houston-based outfit knee-deep in energy market intel, drops a bombshell: America’s wind turbine fleet is set to hemorrhage over $2.92 billion on repairs in 2025 alone. And get this—the fragile blades, those towering symbols of Biden-era virtue signaling, gobble up 37% of that tab, topping $1 billion in fixes just to keep the things from snapping like twigs in a Texas twister…

Add in blade root failures – those sneaky separations at the hub that demand massive cranes and weeks of downtime – and you’re looking at another $222.3 million annual hit. Pitch bearings aren’t far behind at $190.9 million, often requiring full nacelle lifts because, surprise, up-tower tweaks don’t cut it for these overengineered monstrosities. Don’t even get me started on the generators and yaw bearings. The former’s bearing failures from stray currents will siphon $190.6 million, while the latter – slewing rings that let turbines chase the wind – claim over 10% of the total repair pie…

And here’s the elephant in the room: This energy insanity has all been sustained for the past three years by those IRA subsidies. What happens now that the subsidies are being phased out, gone entirely at the end of 2027?

Who or what will pay for all those big cranes to come out into the Permian Basin desert to keep coming out to make the repairs? Or will the broken-down blades and turbines simply become permanent scars on America’s horizons, dilapidating totems of energy fantasy run amuck?”

above pic from weatherguardwind.com This doesn’t look easy. Imagine how much harder maintenance is on the ocean turbines, and another magnitude harder on the ones that are floating and rocking on the waves!

from renewableenergyworld.com

“O&M costs are lowest in the first year of operation, but only slightly. During the first 10 years of a wind turbine’s operations, costs average between $42,000 and $48,000 per MW, IHS Markit said. There is, however, a great range of costs from project to project, with age, location, and O&M strategy all being important factors.

As projects continue to age, direct O&M costs (that is, the direct cost of actually maintaining the turbines) increase while indirect costs (e.g., general site administration and other business services) remain steady or even decline, leading to mostly stable total costs on net. However, Cohen said a wide variation in costs exists for wind projects depending on size of the installation, equipment used, and whether maintenance costs are managed by the OEMs, by independent service providers (ISPs), or by operators themselves.

The median O&M cost for a project with a full-wrap warranty was slightly more than $48,000 per MW per year in 2016.” outdated - sent email 11/7 asking for update -the cost is surely much higher now

decommissioning

Ai “The estimated cost to decommission a single wind turbine ranges from approximately $114,000 to $195,000 for onshore projects, but can be significantly higher ($50,000 to $600,000 per MW for onshore farms). Offshore decommissioning can cost between $200,000 to $600,000 per MW. Factors like turbine size, location, and the need for specialized machinery, such as cranes, greatly influence the final cost”

from forbes.com

“…blades and other components, which account for 6%-14% of the weight, are made of composite materials that are more difficult to recycle. Foundations and underground cables made of concrete, plastic, and metal can usually be recycled but are often left underground when a project is discontinued.

Leaving tons of concrete and steel rebar in the ground really, really bothers me, especially if it’s good farmland.

Moreover, blades and recycling are not the only environmental issues involved. According to the Wind Energy End-of-Service Guide published online by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewal Energy, “While foundations and cables can be recycled or repurposed, they are typically left in place in the ground below a depth (usually 3–5 feet) that is agreed upon by the community/landowner and project owner(s) due to environmental impacts associated with complete removal.

In other words, it’s such a huge job to remove this stuff, with all the heavy equipment needed, that removal in itself destroys environment. Why did these landowners ever agree to allow this in the first place? Follow the money. Because of subsidies, the wind farm companies were able to offer the landowners more money than they could ever make farming, and the temptation was just too great.

Environmental impacts during decommissioning/full removal of below-ground infrastructure can include noise disturbances, ground disturbance, and additional carbon emissions. Additional environmental concerns related to full foundation removal may include compromised site stability, erosion, or unwanted pathways for surface and sub-surface water - due to inappropriate backfilling of the site.”

“The rare earth elements used in permanent magnets in wind turbine generators are difficult to retrieve for reuse. Last but not least, wind turbines’ large blades are constructed from fiberglass, carbon fiber, or epoxy resin, rendering conventional recycling procedures ineffective. New recycling methods are limited in availability and costly, which ironically means that landfilling is currently the most cost-effective disposal option.

pic of old blades stacked up - but keep reading - there are lots more blades we can’t see:

“Landfilling presents an escalating environmental threat. Blades are frequently buried in fragments in several landfills throughout the Great Plains, transforming sites in Wyoming, Iowa, and South Dakota into wind turbine graveyards. Yikes!

By 2050, the cumulative decommissioning material from wind turbines could reach 133 million tons. On average, 3,000 –9,000 blades are being taken out of service per year in the United States, and that number is expected to increase to 10,000–20,000 blades per year by 2040. While landfills may not emit hazardous compounds, non-biodegradable debris is occupying more and more space.”