Nantucket reaches $10.5 million settlement with GE Verona over offshore wind turbine collapse last year

Nantucket officials said Friday that the town has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with GE Vernova over a roughly 100-meter-long blade that came apart last year at the Vineyard Wind offshore energy project, sending fiberglass debris into the ocean and onto Nantucket beaches.

“The Town of Nantucket has reached a $10.5 million settlement with GE Vernova to compensate the Town and local businesses for losses resulting from the July 13, 2024 failure of a turbine blade on the Vineyard Wind 1 project,” town officials said in a statement. “The incident scattered foam, fiberglass, and other debris along Nantucket’s shores during the height of the summer tourist season.”

Officials said the deal includes the creation of a Community Claims Fund to compensate local businesses for economic harm they incurred after the turbine collapse. A third-party administrator will oversee claims, officials said.

“When the blade failed, debris settled on the ocean floor, entered the water table, and littered Nantucket’s beaches for months, requiring an extensive cleanup effort in which many community members joined,” town officials said. “GE Vernova’s investigation attributed the failure to a manufacturing deviation. The company subsequently removed other Vineyard Wind blades produced in the same Quebec facility. Nantucket thanks GE Vernova for its leadership in resolving this matter and urges affected businesses to review the settlement details.”

A hyperlink to those details provided in the statement was broken on Friday morning.

Days after the collapse in July 2024, GE Vernova said a manufacturing issue — insufficient bonding — was the reason for the failure.

Scott Strazik, chief executive of the Cambridge-based energy company, disclosed the cause during a quarterly earnings call last summer, saying that the “manufacturing deviation” should have been spotted during the inspection or quality assurance process, but was not.

As a result, the company said it would reinspect all its blades made for offshore wind farms. Strazik said GE Vernova has produced about 150 blades at a factory in Quebec where the faulty Vineyard Wind blade was manufactured.

In a quarterly filing with securities regulators last year, GE Vernova had warned that it might get sued over the turbine failure, saying “we may receive claims for damages, including liquidated damages for delayed completion, and other incremental or remedial costs.” Those costs, the company added at the time, could be significant.

Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report. This breaking story will be updated.

Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.