An operating wind turbine collapsed at the Noble Altona Wind Park in upstate New York this past Friday. The Press Republican, a local upstate New York newspaper reported on the story.

Neighbors around the Altona wind park reported hearing loud explosions before the turbine apparently snapped in half around 10 a.m. and then caught fire.

Helen Morales, who lives near the fallen Fisher Way turbine, didn’t hear anything, but earlier saw the blades on one turbine “spinning at a high rate of speed” and noted that the air appeared “cloudy” around it.

The 97.5 megawatt facility is run by Noble Environmental Power of Connecticut.  Noble released a pair of statements on Friday commenting on the incident. The first statement confirmed the collapse and subsequent fire while also indicating that there were no injuries. The second statement provided an update on the situation and indicated that the collapsed turbine was manufactured by General Electric.

The facility is currently closed and Noble has indicated that an investigation will take several months.

In recent months the installed capacity of wind in New York state has grown to over 1000 megawatts. The Altona wind farm represents a little less than ten percent of the total installed wind capacity in New York State. The outage is likely to affect the wind farm owner a lot more than it will the state electric grid. Like many renewable power companies Noble has cut back on spending in recent months and implemented staff reductions as the credit markets have frozen up.

This incident is likely to raise questions about wind turbine installation and maintenance procedures. Wind power has been exploding in the U.S. over the last few years. And even though the technology is widely used around the world there is still a lot to learn about it. Hopefully wind turbine manufacturers and plant operators will take a cue from this incident and review their procedures to ensure that turbines are manufactured, installed and operated with the highest standards of safety and durability in mind.