The report showed that working hours in wind went up by 3% overall in 2023, with a record 7.5 million hours worked in the onshore side of the UK industry over the course of the year.
Safety incidents rose 16% during that time according to the report, with a total of 606 logged by Safety On over the course of the year.
Of those incidents, seven or around 1.2% resulted in an emergency services response and/or medical evacuation (ERME), the report showed.
In this most serious category, three of the seven incidents occurred during electrical systems work according to the report — accounting for around 9% of all safety incidents involving electrical systems in onshore wind in the UK.
“One incident resulted in multiple injuries, where technicians working with electrical systems injured several body parts because of an occurrence of arc flash on the turbine,” the report read.
It pointed out that electrical systems were also resposible for medical emergencies and evacuations in 2022 and 2020, suggesting a trend in this kind of work in UK onshore wind.
Replacing major components recorded the second most number of ERME incidents (2) in 2023, Safety On said.
The overall number of incidents where a worker was physically injured went up slightly, rising from 117 in 2022 to 124 in 2023.
Operations more risky than construction
Most incidents happened at wind farms that were already operational according to the report, with that figure outnumbering safety incidents during construction by a large margin according to the report.
“Across the various site types in 2023, a significant majority of incidents occurred in operational sites: 512 (84% of the total). This is followed by construction sites, with 69 incidents, (11% of the total), development sites, with 12 incidents, (2% of the total), and finally decommissioning/repowering sites, with only two incidents, (0,3% of the total),” it read.
Meanwhile the number of safety incidents considered “high potential” in the report was 105, or 17% of the total — that represented a 7% decrease from Safety On’s 2022 figure of 113.
Of the high potential incidents logged in the Safety On report, 65 incidents (62% of the total) happened on or at a wind turbine, which was the single most common location for a high potential incident to occur.
One in five of all safety incidents that occurred at wind turbines were high potential, the report showed.
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