Fire on Scroby Sands Wind Turbine Self-Extinguishes, Incident Under Investigation

August 16, 2023, by Adrijana Buljan

A wind turbine at the Scroby Sands offshore wind farm in the UK caught fire yesterday morning (15 August). The cause of the fire, which self-extinguished later the same day, is now being investigated.

On Tuesday around 13:00 (local time), Humber Coastguard said via social media that HM Coastguard was monitoring a wind turbine on fire at the Scroby Sands Wind Farm, located off the coast of Great Yarmouth.

“The alarm was raised at about 10.50am and all personnel working at the site have been evacuated by the operating company and are accounted for”, Humber Coastguard posted yesterday.

RWE, the wind farm’s owner, said the fire broke out in the nacelle and that no one was working on board the wind turbine at the time, with the fire later extinguishing on its own.

The coastguard set a 500-metre restriction zone around the wind turbine while the assessment was underway yesterday afternoon.

The wind turbine on fire has been photographed and recorded on video by people from or working in the area. You can watch one of the videos on Oliv3r Drone Photography’s YouTube channel.

The wind farm is located on the Scroby Sands sandbank in the North Sea, some 2.5 kilometres off Great Yarmouth, and is one of the UK’s first operational commercial-scale offshore wind farms.

The 60 MW Scroby Sands offshore wind farm, owned and operated by RWE Renewables, comprises 30 Vestas V80-2.0 MW turbines.