Author: Francesco Miceli
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Nabrawind Transition Foundation
Some days ago I have been contacted by Miguel, Sales And Marketing Manager at Nabrawind. Nabrawind is a Spanish company working at several interesting breakthrough concepts – including a modular blade that I will try to describe in another article in the future, a self erecting tower and the innovative “Transition Foundation”. Miguel asked me if…
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Lift me up: the braced foundation
The braced foundation is a partially precast foundation that lift the wind turbine some additional meters above the ground. Developed and patented by Esteyco (a Spanish engineering firm) is a technical solution validated, certified and used in several wind farms worldwide. This solution increase the hub height up to 5 meters, which usually results in…
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Medium voltage power cables in wind farms: an introduction
This post is an extension of the previous short article I wrote some years ago on the characteristics of wind farms medium voltage system. I wrote it with the help of my friend and colleague Kamran, who spent more than an hour answering my questions on the subject. Thank you Kamran! The medium voltage network…
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Crane hardstands for installation of wind turbines: a handbook
Due to the pandemic this year we have been forced to go on vacation by car – the majority of flights from Germany to southern Italy have been cancelled, so we are making a 2000+ Km car trip with our three kids. While my wife was driving I searched something to read and I have…
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Once More, with Feeling: Timber Towers
Approximately one year ago I wrote a post about a full scale prototype of a wind turbine tower made of wood. It has been built in 2012, but after that the idea seemed to have stalled without progress: one of the companies involved in the construction, TimberTower GmbH, disappeared from the radar shutting down their website and…
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Printable 3D concrete wind turbine towers
Yes, you’re reading right – you can print your concrete tower. I have discussed in many previous articles how I see some evidence that we are reaching the maximum size for steel towers, mainly because of transportation issues. For higher towers concrete towers could help solving the problem, as they can be transported in pieces…
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Dancing in the wind
I have discussed in other post the phenomenal growth of the dimensions of wind turbines in the last 2 decades. Bigger rotors, taller towers and more MW has been the industry trend year after year. There is some evidence that we are reaching the limit – blades of more than 50m length pose significant logistic challenges, while…
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Blades repair – how to fix it
I have discussed in other posts why wind turbines blades are prone to different type of damages and how to detect them. But what happen when a problem is identified? Changing the blade is usually the “last recourse” option: in addition to the cost of the blade itself there are the transportation costs plus the…
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Where have all the wind turbine gone? Foldable towers
In previous post some years ago I have described two alternative solution for the wind turbine tower that should help solving the problem of the huge cranes that are currently needed for the erection of the wind turbines components. One is the self-lifting precast tower developed by Esteyco, a Spanish engineering company that developed several…
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Wind turbine blade damage detection systems
Wind turbine blades are rarely subject to catastrophic failures, although you can find a bunch of videos on YouTube with blades flying away or falling into pieces. They are however subject to several problems, such as cracks, debonding of the various layers, internal delamination, etc. As an order of magnitude blade failures are accountable for…