Windstory #18 - The best wind turbine transport videos to enjoy this summer
Perfect to watch while enjoying a well-deserved break
Hello everyone and welcome to a new issue of Windletter. I'm Sergio Fernández Munguía (@Sergio_FerMun) and here we discuss the latest news in the wind power sector from a different perspective. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so here.
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Windstory is the articles section of Windletter, where we publish single-topic analyses and share interesting stories from the wind energy sector.
From time to time, without a set schedule, a new edition of Windstory will arrive in your inbox. You can read other articles here.
Today we bring you a different kind of edition, featuring a compilation of videos on wind turbine transport. Probably the most eye-catching and spectacular manoeuvres during the construction of a wind farm, especially now that turbines are so large.
🚚 The best videos on wind turbine transport
In the roughly 40-year history of modern wind energy, turbine size has grown continuously. At first, the growth was slow and gradual, but in the last 10 to 15 years, it has accelerated significantly.
Of course, the increase in size has a direct impact on how turbines are transported. Where once you had to move a 40-metre blade, now it’s an 80-metre one.
That said, the impact differs greatly between onshore and offshore.
In offshore, it’s not as noticeable or complex. Offshore component factories are generally located at ports, so road transport is rarely a limiting factor.
Where offshore is feeling the impact is in installation vessels and their cranes, which must be adapted to the new turbine sizes. In fact, vessel availability has been mentioned as a potential bottleneck for the sector.
Onshore, however, things have become much more complicated. Turbines often need to travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometres overland, crossing towns, cities, bridges, tunnels…
To the physical barriers, you must add complex coordination with ports, authorities, municipalities, police… which can sometimes be collaborative, and sometimes less so. In the end, all of this becomes a risk that can cause delays and cost overruns for the project.
For projects built in complex terrain, there’s the additional challenge of taking turbines up a mountain, building new roads and platforms to ensure safe transport and assembly.
With smaller machines, all of these challenges were much less significant, and the risks, too.
🎥 Videos
At the European level, some of the most complex and spectacular transport operations take place in Greece. It’s a country with very rugged terrain, and most wind farms are located in mountainous areas. The use of blade lifters is practically standard.
The following video shows blade transport using a blade lifter. As a curiosity, at the beginning of the video you can see a “transshipment area” where the blades are transferred from a conventional truck to the blade lifter before facing the most challenging part of the route.
The footage on the way to the top is truly spectacular.
The following video shows a similar case, also including some sections where the blade lifter has to reverse, pushed by pulling trucks along certain parts of the route.
The following video shows another strategy sometimes used in Greece: loading trucks with preloaded components onto ferries. This way, many kilometres of road transport are avoided, routes that often require complex interventions or are simply unfeasible.
These ferries later unload on beaches near the wind farm site. The complexity of this operation lies in the ferry needing to get close enough to the coast, which depends on water depth, and in ensuring favourable wave conditions. In some cases, temporary piers are also built to facilitate unloading.
Of course, not every beach or coastal area is suitable for this type of operation, as it entails some environmental impact, as can be seen in the video.
As a curiosity, the video shows segmented blades from GE Vernova.
In Spain, blade lifters are not very common. In fact, the following video shows how, for this wind farm, the use of blade lifters was avoided by carrying out major interventions on the access roads, as well as widening the curves.
The blade lifter is an interesting and spectacular solution, but the truth is, it moves very, very slowly.
Bonus
If you're looking for more extreme cases, impressive footage often comes from China. And sometimes, it also includes practices that clearly wouldn’t meet Western health and safety standards.
One day I’d love to dedicate full editions to logistics and installation.
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Disclaimer: The opinions presented in Windletter are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.