A wind turbine caught on fire at Mercury's Tararua Wind Farm on Wednesday afternoon. Photo / Supplied
A wind turbine caught on fire at Mercury's Tararua Wind Farm on Wednesday afternoon. Photo / Supplied
An investigation is underway after a wind turbine caught fire at a wind farm near Palmerston North.
Emergency services were called to the site near Aokautere, Palmerston North, at 2.40pm on Wednesday, a Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesperson said.
Four fire trucks and a tanker responded but left shortly after 4pm, as they were "unable to assist", he said.
The fire was being left to burn overnight under the management of on-site contractors.
A spokesperson for Mercury NZ Ltd confirmed the wind turbine was one of theirs at the Tararua Wind Farm.
The spokesperson confirmed they were aware of a "localised fire" in one of the turbines there and that on-site contractors Vestas were managing the situation
General manager generation Stewart Hamilton said they were still working to understand how the fire started
"Our on-site contractors Vestas will be undertaking a full review of the situation. Nobody was near the fire when it started, and damage is restricted to the one turbine."
Emergency services were called to the site of a wind turbine on fire near Aokautere, Palmerston North, on Wednesday afternoon. Photo / Jakob Stone
A spokesperson for Vesta said an employee reported smoke coming from a wind turbine about 2pm before contacting emergency services who were managing the incident.
"Vestas can confirm that no people were near the turbine at the time of the incident, all employees have been accounted for, and there are no reported injuries.
"Site personnel have temporarily paused the wind turbines in that area of the wind farm and commenced an incident investigation."
Five connected turbines have been taken out of service as a result of the event, and will likely remain so for several weeks.
They said it was too early to comment on or confirm the cause of the fire but confirmed Vestas would undertake a detailed Root Cause Analysis to determine what caused the incident.
The wind farm was acquired by Mercury when it took over Tilt Renewables' New Zealand operations in August this year.
The Tararua Wind Farm stands on 700 hectares of private farmland in the Tararua Range.
It is New Zealand's largest capacity wind farm, with 134 turbines and a total capacity of 161MW.
The impacted turbine is a Vestas V90-3MW, hub height 65m with three 45m long blades.
