BY MILES LAYTON

PASQUOTANK COUNTY — One of the massive turbines at the Amazon Wind Farm US East was spotted missing an entire blade — that’s something you don’t see everyday…

The turbine, located in Pasquotank County not far from the Elizabeth City Walmart along Halstead Boulevard, was photographed Sunday, Nov. 23, 2025, with only two blades remaining. 

While I’m no engineer, I don’t think it’s a reach to say that a standard utility-scale turbine requires three blades to function safely and efficiently, and the sudden loss of one should raise immediate concerns.

Avangrid sent this statement around 4 p.m. Monday — “On Sunday morning, November 23, 2025, Avangrid technicians responded to an isolated event at our Desert Wind facility in North Carolina in which a single turbine blade experienced damage. No personnel were in the immediate area at the time of the event, no injuries occurred, and no additional damage was detected other than the affected blade. Avangrid has taken immediate steps to secure the impacted turbine, as well as any debris.” — Keaton Thomas, Avangrid Spokesperson

Monday morning, Pasquotank County Manager Sparty Hammett said, “We do not have any information on the wind turbine.”

Wind industry experts note that blade failures, while rare, can result from manufacturing defects, lightning strikes, extreme wind shear, or internal stress fractures that propagate over time. Turbine blades are typically made from reinforced fiberglass composites and can measure more than 180 feet in length, meaning a detached blade can travel significant distances before coming to rest.

The area around the turbine includes commercial corridors, open farmland, and several residential pockets — prompting questions about what kind of risk the detachment may have posed.

The turbine is part of the Amazon Wind Farm US East, also known as the Desert Wind Farm, a 104-turbine facility stretching across Pasquotank and Perquimans counties. Operated by Avangrid Renewables, the site came online in late 2016 after a six-year permitting process and became the first large-scale wind farm not only in North Carolina but in the southeastern United States.

The full wind farm has a generating capacity of 208 megawatts (MW) — enough to power approximately 61,000 U.S. homes per year. All of the electricity generated at the site is contracted to Amazon, which uses the supply to power its growing network of data centers in Virginia and across the region.

Each of the facility’s turbines is a Gamesa G114 model, with a hub height of 92 meters and a rotor diameter of 114 meters. Each unit is capable of generating 2 MW of power, making the loss of any one blade a significant issue for both operational output and structural stability.

The Desert Wind Farm was originally developed beginning around 2006 by Atlantic Wind, a U.S. subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, on a stretch of open farmland locally known as “the desert.” The project began construction in 2015 after Amazon agreed to purchase the energy, enabling financing for the first 104-turbine phase.

The farm is projected to produce about 670 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually, corresponding to a capacity factor above 35% — a strong performance for an East Coast wind installation.

As of Monday, Avangrid Renewables had not released details about how the blade failure occurred or how soon the damaged turbine will be secured. It remains unclear whether the company has located the missing blade.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.