ENERGY Ӏ ONSHORE WIND POWER
(They are to be replaced with
eight higher, more powerful ones, quadrupling the capacity of the farm). “We were able to use the T5 configuration – the 80-metre telescopic boom – right from the start,” says managing partner Björn Sommer. “This has huge advantages, because with our LTM 1500-8.1 we would have had to build a luffing jib or at least a lattice type fixed jib. We also managed with just 75 tonnes of ballast. This reduces set-up and conversion times. Our staff are delighted with the simplicity of the LTM 1650-8.1.” The rapid evolution of
onshore wind power technology underscores the critical role that innovative lifting and transportation solutions play in the sector's success. If onshore wind power seems to exhibit fewer construction challenges than offshore farms, they are still very far from easy. To compare their challenges with those of offshore windfarm construction turn the page to see part two of this article.
COULD LARGEST AIRCRAFT EVER BE THE SOLUTION TO MOVING MEGA BLADES? As we have seen, wind energy components will only get larger; and the practical limits of transporting them by land may in some cases be being reached already. Radia is an energy company focussed on radically expanding the scope and scale of the onshore wind energy industry – indeed on bringing offshore scales to onshore. The company envisions structures the height of the Eiffel Tower as typical. Components of its GigaWind system would be simply too long, too tall and too wide to transport terrestrially. A 100m-long blade for example would have a hub diameter of around 7 or 8 metres; and overpasses and bridges in most countries are standardised at around five metres. The components, even on the lowest of low-loaders, simply would not fit underneath them.
Radia’s solution to this logical (and logistical) dead end is to transport tower sections and entire blades by air, inside the fuselage of a plane.
They are proposing to build an aircraft to do so. The only snag is size: these will be the largest payloads ever moved by air, and the plane, called ‘Windrunner’, will have to be the largest aircraft in history. Even so, it will have to be able to land on minimally prepared dirt or gravel runways carved out at the wind farm site and sometimes no more than 1800 metres long. It is not quite the impossibility it might seem. The cargo is extreme in size but not in weight. So although the Windrunner will have a cargo
bay volume of 272,000 cubic feet, 12 times that of a Boeing 747-400F, its wingspan, at 261 feet, would be only 20 feet longer. Its length though at 365 feet, will be 127 feet longer than the Boeing’s. “This is the first time that an aircraft has been designed to optimise on volume instead of weight, and so it's very unique in that sense. It can still move a lot of mass, 70 tonnes [a Boeing 747 cargo variant aircraft can typically carry around 110 tonnes] but it has a volume that's about 12 times bigger than a 747,” said founder and CEO Mark Lundstrom. “This means the cargo hold can carry a 100-metre-plus blade – and because wind farms are typically built in remote locations the plane will be capable of landing on short, unpaved airstrips.”
Liebherr’s
LTM 1650-8.1: all-terrain mobiles also have high lift heights
28 CRANES TODAY
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