The same Vineyard Wind turbine blade that snapped in half last summer now appears to have been struck by lightning, according to the company and the U.S. Coast Guard. 

On Sunday, officials confirmed that the turbine at the southernmost end of the Vineyard Wind lease off Martha’s Vineyard was apparently hit by lightning late last week, damaging the already broken blade. 

The Coast Guard reported a strike occurred on Feb. 27, and it was working with Vineyard Wind to ensure there were no navigational hazards in the area.

Vineyard Wind, in a statement Sunday afternoon, said a preliminary inspection indicated that the blade had been hit by lightning, and the company was continuing to assess the damage.

“This was contained to the damaged blade and based on current information there is no impact to the nacelle or turbine structure,” the company wrote. “Vineyard Wind deployed both aerial and maritime resources and based on current observations, there is no indication of debris from this event.”

Lightning strikes on turbines are not uncommon, said Sanjay Arwade, a civil and environmental engineering professor at UMass Amherst. 

Turbines are designed to have systems that allow the lightning to pass through them and go down into the ground, not dissimilar to a lightning rod on a house, said Mr. Arwade, who is an associate director of the university’s wind energy center and specializes in the consequences of extreme weather events on turbines.

“Over the course of its lifetime, we would expect a turbine to be hit by lightning,” he said. 

Vineyard Wind has not disclosed the extent of the damage, and Mr. Arwade did not expect that the past structural damage to the turbine would increase the likelihood of a strike, though it could allow for more damage if the lightning protections were down during repairs.

The lightning strike comes as Vineyard Wind was working to get back on track after the blade broke in July, scattering thousands of pieces of fiberglass into the ocean. The turbine, one of 62 planned for a 166,886-acre area of ocean about 14 miles south of the Island, had a defect that was not caught in the manufacturing process and had since been turned off. 

The company is under orders from the federal government to remove 66 blades that were built at the same Canadian factory as the defective one.

Vineyard Wind on Sunday said it was already continuously monitoring the broken turbine due to the previous blade failure, and its manufacturer, GE Vernova, planned to remove the remaining portion of the blade and replace it in May. 

In a statement Wednesday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the federal agency charged with overseeing offshore wind energy projects, said that it was requiring a comprehensive assessment of the turbine and its associated equipment to determine the full extent of the damage. 

The bureau confirmed that because the turbine was already broken, its lightning protection system was not operational. All the other wind turbines remain equipped with the protection systems. 

Standing more than 800-feet tall, the turbines have been a point of controversy in the region and nationally. Vineyard Wind was the first commercial-scale project to get all of its permitting when it was approved by the federal government in 2021, and last summer, before the break, it was the largest operating offshore wind farm in the country.

As of January, only one turbine was back up and running, and the company last week was supposed to start testing its light system for aircraft flying over. Officials on Nantucket said the company was also getting a new vessel that could help with taking down the defective turbine blades. 

According to Vineyard Wind’s construction plans filed with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the turbines and service platforms would have lightning protections installed on their electrical systems. 

The plan doesn’t go into greater detail on what that would entail.