Hermanville turbine that lost blade in storm expected to be repaired by May or June

The P.E.I. government's wind farm in Hermanville has been running at reduced capacity since the end of December after a storm took down a large part of a blade on one of its turbines.

Blair Arsenault, an operational engineer at P.E.I. Energy Corporation, said the incident with Turbine 3, or T3, is still under investigation.

"The technicians have gone up the tower and everything is functional out in the hub and including the nacelle. So it's definitely repairable. We will need a new blade and we will need to do repairs to the nacelle."

The nacelle is the covered housing containing the components that together turn the rotation of the turbine into energy. 

Arsenault said T3 will likely be operational in late May or mid-June.

While blades on such turbines are usually supposed to withstand storms, Arsenault says damage is not uncommon. 

"So [at] East Point, for example, we've replaced five blades, and at Hermanville we've replaced two blades," he said.

That doesn't include two blades that were sheered off T9 in a storm in late 2023. The damage to that turbine was such that the province decided to demolish T9 in an explosive fashion in mid-June of last year. 

Has been operating at a loss

That was the latest setback at a wind farm that has been losing the P.E.I. government money and that at one point had seen its production decline to just a fraction of its design capacity.

The wind farm began operation in 2014, built at a taxpayer cost of $60 million. Electricity generation had fallen to 10 per cent of design capacity by July 2023, with only four of 10 turbines operational and some of those running at reduced capacity because officials were concerned about damage.

At one point, the cost of repairs was estimated at $10 million. More recently, that number has been estimated to be as high as $15 million.

According to public records, the Hermanville wind farm operated at a $1.2 million loss in fiscal year 2023/24. The year before it ran up a loss of $683,057.

Production and costs

Arsenault said that fall, winter and spring are the best in terms of electricity production in the province, and that if T3 was active it would produce approximately one gigawatt of electricity per month. As a result, the province is losing $90,000 per month of revenue from this turbine being down.

Island Morning6:48Aftermath of the lost blade on Hermanville wind turbine

A blade fell off one of the turbines at Hermanville in the high wind storm at the end of December. We hear what happens next from Blair Arsenault of the P.E.I. Energy Corporation.

Although the turbine is still under warranty, Arsenault said the manufacturer won't be paying for the damage. While the turbine's manufacturer, Nordex, was supposed to provide warranty coverage through to 2029, there was a cap on the total value of that coverage which, as of early 2024, had nearly been reached.

Arsenault also said the province wouldn't be filing an insurance claim.

"Our deductible and waiting have grown in recent years to the point where you know insurance claim doesn't make sense for everything that happened at the farm," he said.