loomberg Philanthropies Tracks “Petrochemical Incidents” but Not Wind and Solar Accidents (full series)
Beyond Petrochemicals | Basic Physics
Accidents Jan.–June 2024 | Accidents July–Dec. 2024
Wind and Solar Accidents: July–December 2024
July 9. California: Ninety-three acres were burned up when a vegetation fire started at an industrial solar facility.
July 10. New Jersey: Media reported “a large response from emergency responders” was needed to put out a solar panel fire atop the roof of a manufacturing facility. The blaze was upgraded to a two-alarm fire because “strong winds” were making it worse.
July 13. Massachusetts: The Vinyard Wind offshore industrial wind facility was home to 62 of what manufacturer GE Vernova claims is the “largest turbine in the Western world.” In operation for less than a year and hit by wind speeds of…no worse than 13 mph…a blade on one of the turbines shredded apart. Most of the fiberglass blade and “thousands” of shards of same fell into the Atlantic Ocean and washed up on the beaches of ritzy Nantucket.
The manufacturer claimed the problem was “not a fundamental design flaw” and then said it was a “material deviation or a manufacturing deviation in one of our factories that, through the inspection or quality assurance process, we should have identified.”
A lawsuit filed by a different GE Vernova customer claimed this was a distinction without a difference: “Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies.”
When the Deepwater Horizon blew up in 2010, maybe BP should have thought to explain it away as a “petroleum liberation event.”
July 17. Wyoming: The blade of a wind turbine was taken out by lightning.
“Lightning damage is the single largest cause of unplanned downtime for wind turbines and the most common insurance claim filed by wind farm owners,” claimed the report in Cowboy State News.
So, the leading cause of wind turbines not producing electricity is wind turbines getting hit by . . . electricity?
July 22. Rhode Island: A local fire chief blamed the solar panels that “completely covered” a commercial building for a serious blaze that broke out. The chief told local media that “fire crews are seeing these types of fires more often.”
This isn’t surprising. A September 2022 report from Insurance Business Magazine carried this headline: “Fire a major hidden danger for solar farms.” The main finding was this:
A recent report by Firetrace International found that the solar industry is potentially underestimating the risk of fire at solar farms, partly due to a shortage of data on solar farm fires. The report also said that research into the issue has given rise to suspicions that fires at solar farms have been under-reported.
July 23. New Jersey: One day after the Rhode Island commercial building fire (noted above) another solar panel fire broke out atop a New Jersey warehouse, leading to a three-alarm firefighter response. The local ABC TV affiliate said its investigators had “interviewed a number of consumers who said solar panels caused major damage to their home.”
July 28. New York: A NY TV station filed this report: “Residents within a 1-mile radius of the scene were told to shelter in place for several hours Thursday afternoon and evening after four lithium battery storage trailers caught fire at the Convergent Energy solar farm.”
The locals got pretty snippy because the fire was “the third so far this summer at energy storage facilities in New York.” The fire chief added this bad news about his challenge: “Where this being lithium-ion batteries, they’re a beast of their own, and the water, you just can’t control it with it.”
(Note: This was included because the fire occurred at industrial solar facility. Other battery storage fires, such as two others in New York, have not been added. While it would have been defensible to include most battery storage facility fires in this account because battery storage is not needed for oil and gas energy, this list does not include other battery storage fires in 2024. Including those could have added a dozen additional examples.)
July 31. Oregon: A grass fire broke out at a 33,000-panel solar energy facility. Fire officials blamed “overheated electronic panels that failed and then subsequently dropped molten electronics onto the dried grass.” (It happened again on September 30; see below.)
August 9. Maine: A tractor-trailer truck carrying a 240-foot-long turbine blade hit a bridge and rolled over. The highway was closed for 11 hours.
August 9. Minnesota: The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported on a town of 1,100 residents and their ordeal with a pile of 100 discarded wind turbine blades.
“Almost four years later, the mountain of old wind parts — which is visible on Google Earth — is still there,” reported the newspaper. “Some blades are cracked and stained. Locals say they draw feral cats and foxes and are a safety risk because kids climb on the junk. They’re also ugly, ruining Richardson’s view, hurting property values and attracting the curiosity of seemingly everyone who drives the highway into town.”
In September, a co-owner of the property where the blades had been discarded tried—without success—to use a stump grinder to cut them apart.
August 12. California: A wind turbine fire sparked a brushfire underneath that burned at least 329 acres (half a square mile.)
August 14. California: Solar panels covering a half-million-square-foot roof of a commercial building caught fire. Aggressive work by more than 80 firefighters had the blaze put out within an hour, even though the size of the building prevented them from using some of their best equipment to reach the flames. A news release from the Los Angeles County Fire Department made this observation: “Without the aggressive and timely actions of the crews on scene, the fire could have continued to jump from solar array to solar array and potentially extend to the interior of the building, with devastating results for the business.”
August 15. Iowa: “Your wind turbine’s on fire again,” said a neighbor, making a 5 am call to farmer Sally Freeman. It was the third time in 18 months that one of her turbines had been hit by lightning and caught fire. (See the May 13 incident in Iowa.)
“The strikes left fiberglass, dust and other debris strewn over at least 240 acres, almost a third of the farm’s land,” reported local media. “And with the fall harvest underway, the family’s frustration with having the damaged turbines removed and the debris cleaned up is threatening their bottom line.”
According to the report: “The scattered debris on the farm has become more embedded in the corn as time goes on, leading to questions on how the harvest will unfold to avoid potential contamination and damage to farm equipment.”
Freeman claimed she received little help from the owner of the turbine and that the damage to her farm business could run to millions of dollars.
August 18. North Carolina: The roof of a commercial building caught fire from what the fire department described as an “unspecified abnormal electrical event in the solar panel system.” Thirty firefighters were called to put it out.
August 25. Missouri: For the second (but not last) time in 2024, a wind turbine tower collapsed at the High Prairie Renewable Energy Center. (See also April 26 and October 31.) The 175-turbine facility had been open since 2021.
September 6. Tennessee: Six fire departments, including the state forestry service, were needed to put out a grass fire that broke out at a solar energy facility.
September 7. New Jersey: Solar panels atop a commercial building caught fire. While that fire was burning, another (not solar-related) blaze erupted in the same community.
September 12. Arizona: The rooftop solar panels above a furniture store in a strip mall caught fire.
September 26. Iowa: Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced a lawsuit against Global Fiberglass Solutions (GFS), alleging the firm “dumped and abandoned 1,300 decommissioned wind turbine blades in stockpiles across the state” and “refused cleanup, allowing these blades to pose an environmental risk.”
Turbine blades can be as long as a football field and are very difficult to recycle.
September 30. Massachusetts: Solar panels atop the roof of a residential home caught fire and burned through the roof. Ten emergency vehicles were brought to the scene. Nobody was living in the home. The fire was reported by a neighbor.
September 30. Oregon: A grass fire broke out at a solar panel facility, the second in two months. As with the July 31 incident (see above) fire officials blamed “overheated electronic panels that failed and then subsequently dropped molten electronics onto the dried grass.”
Soltage, the owner of the solar panels, removed them from the electrical grid and away from dry grass, but warned this did not fully address the fire risk.
“Solar panels cannot be fully de-energized,” claimed a Soltage news release. “If the sun is shining, electricity is being produced within the panels. There is no ‘off-switch’ to stop electricity from being produced within the panels and the internal components.”
October 16. Texas: A fire at a solar facility burned eight acres before it was put out by local fire crews. The local Fox TV affiliate reported the “fire could have started from a power unit that controls the solar panels.”
October 26. New York: Nearly 17,000 solar panels caught fire, and 15 fire departments were needed to put it out. Weather was once again at fault for the maladies of weather dependent power. A fire department official blamed strong winds and dry grass for the size of the blaze.
October 31. Missouri: The third turbine collapse in six months occurred at the High Prairie wind facility in Missouri. (See also: August 25 and April 26). Witnesses reported two blades coming detached, followed by the rest of the tower falling with a loud crash. At the time of its opening in 2021, the facility had 175 turbines.
November 19. Massachusetts: A solar panel caught fire atop a residential home.
