100-ton wind turbine blades fall to pieces in Vietnam

Residents of Hoa Binh District heard a loud noise at around 5 p.m. Friday and saw wing blades at Hoa Binh Wind Power No. 5 fell to the ground. No person was injured.

Authorities of the district were seen on site Saturday morning to examine the accident.

The blades, each of which is 80 meters long and three meters wide, broke into many pieces in an area of 50 square meters.

The project was being developed by Hacom Bac Lieu Energy.

A blade that fell on the fences.

Another fell on a shrimp farm.

The blades also damaged a storage house of a local fish farm.

There were three people in the house when the blades dropped but no one was hurt, said Nguyen Van Kien, owner of the farm.

Wind turbine blades are made by light materials such as plastic and fiberglass

The inside of a blade was exposed after the fall.

The turbines in the project have been suspended after the incident.

The rotor, which weighs dozens of tons, created a hole of five meters deep.

The incident also broke the project’s internal power line.

Security guards were deployed to keep local residents from entering the area.

The project has a price tag of VND3.7 trillion (US$150 million) with a capacity of up to 80 megawatts.

It is built on an area of 30 hectares with 26 turbines that can generate 280 million kilowatt-hours a year.

This is the largest onshore wind power plant near the sea in the Mekong Delta region.

Bac Lieu Province has 10 wind power plants, eight of them operational.