Fire at wind farm. Stand by for the hysteria.

JUNE 30, 2024. There are reports that a turbine caught fire in western Victoria yesterday.

We have to expect that anti renewables activists will use this to try and inflame opposition to the further development of technologies like wind and solar.

But does anyone remember the fire that burnt for 45 days in the Hazelwood coal mine in 2014? It caused extreme air pollution, which impacted on local residents for weeks. Many hundreds of fire fighters attended and worked in difficult conditions to get the fire under control. Fires at fossil fuel plants pose enormous risks, not just locally as a turbine fire does.

Fire on a large scale – as happened at Hazelwood – continues to be a real risk while we have coal mines operating.

And as firefighters, how often do we get called out to leaks of fossil gas? In my region its a regular thing.

Yes fires happen in turbines. But as was noted in ReNew Economy,

‘Wind turbines are essentially small buckets of lubricating oil on top of a large metal stick, with rotating wings attached. Add a strike of lightning, a short circuit or a mechanical fault and they occasionally set alight. While that might make a good photo,’ fires are not all that common.

How often do turbines catch fire?

How frequent are these fires? The statistics vary a bit and there are claims that fires are under reported. But some estimates include the following:

Wind turbines catch fire at a rate of 1 in 1,710.

Another data set produced by DNV GL, an internationally accredited registrar and classification society, estimates the rate of fire in wind turbines at 1 in 2,000 each year. The DNV GL analysis examined all wind turbine fires, regardless of whether the fire resulted in a total loss of the turbine.

A 2020 article in Wind Power Engineering Magazine also estimates that 1 in 2,000 wind turbines catch fire each year.

Turbine fires and firefighter safety

Anti renewables activists will often point out that fire crews had to stand back and let the turbine burn out when a fire happens at a wind farm.

But anyone who actually fights fire knows that the most essential aspect of firefighting is about staying safe. So crews often step back and contain rather than directly tackle a fire when the fire presents safety concerns. This might be because of a cloud of toxic smoke from an industrial fire, or because large buildings might be built of precast and tilted-up concrete walls which may pose dangers to firefighters under fire conditions. In tall forests we are constantly scanning for danger from fire damaged trees and sometimes have to pull back from firefighting if the wind picks up or there are too many dangerous trees.

But anti renewables activists try to paint a standard safety practise as somehow being unique to fires involving turbines. This is simply not the case.

Don’t believe the hype

So lets push back at the rhetoric and misinformation that will be spread and amplified in coming days.

Get engaged in the online debates – share your perspective as a firefighter and remind people that while all technologies will have some form of inherent risk, the impacts of coal and gas fires far outweighs those of occasional fires in renewable energy facilities.