Norway restarts wind farm after losing 22-ton Siemens Gamesa Blade

The owner of a Norwegian wind farm said that after a four month outage, a large Siemens Gamesa blade will be partially re-started on Monday.

Odal Vind lost the 72-metre blade (236 ft), weighing 22 tons, in April. This loss highlighted the challenges Siemens Energy faces after it acquired full control of Spain’s Siemens Gamesa. Shareholders claim that the takeover was botched.

Odal already had halted a number of the farm's 32 turbines because of damage and inspection requirements when the blade of the Siemens Gamesa 5.0145 model, which is part of the turbine manufacturer's 4.X Platform, fell off in early April.

Cloudberry Clean Energy (which owns 33.4% of the wind farm) said on Friday that two turbines would be operational by Monday after a thorough inspection and review by Siemens Gamesa.

The report added that "significant efforts have been undertaken, including the replacement and repair of blades on remaining turbines."

Cloudberry stated that it was expected that 20 turbines would be in production at the end of August with the goal of having all 34 up and running by the year's end.

Siemens Gamesa has not responded to an immediate request for comment.

Akershus Energy, with a stake of 33.4% and KLP Pension Fund with a 33.2% are the other owners. (Reporting and editing by Sharon Singleton; Terje Solsvik)

(source: Reuters)