Villagers were woken by a 300ft wind turbine crashing down on a Welsh mountainside – after it was blown over during storms which brought 50pmh winds.
The £20million turbine – double the height of Nelson’s Column – snapped apart and blades crumpled in raging wind.
Families in the nearby village of Gilfach Goch, near Bridgend, South Wales, told how it sounded like ‘thunder and lightning’.
It woke them at around 6.50am on Monday morning and echoed around the valley below.
The 29-turbine Pant Y Wal wind farm opened in 2013 and makes enough power for 19,000 homes – until one was wrecked in the storm at the weekend.
Villagers are questioning how the turbine could have fallen apart during winds of around 50mph and demand officials check the status of neighbouring turbines.
Nordex – the company that manufactured the turbine – said an investigation is now underway to determine the cause of the collapse.
A renewable energy industry expert, who wanted to remain anonymous, told MailOnline that a collapsing turbine is a ‘real rarity’, adding there ‘are more than 10,000 of them up and down the country’. He suggested the materials might have been faulty, but insisted it was ‘very unlikely to be the local wind speed’ that brought it down.
Neighbour Lydia Stephens wrote: ‘A wind turbine fell over in the wind farm on my village this morning and I thought it was thunder and lighting but how the hell does a wind turbine fall over?
‘Apparently it was creaking and banging all night before it collapsed and one woman thought it was her neighbours tumble dryer.’
Fellow villagers Ricky Williams described it as ‘a bang like thunder early hours.’
Other villagers said they were worried over the safety of the turbines following the collapse.
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