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For land based installations, start as simple as transportation. You certainly don't want to assemble the blades on-site and the contortions they go through for
by usrusr 5y ago
For land based installations, start as simple as transportation. You certainly don't want to assemble the blades on-site and the contortions they go through for trucking the finished blades are already quite crazy. Had the Cargolifter airship not been abandoned, I'm sure it would be used exclusively as a wind turbine parts carrier.
- baybal2 5y agoI was thinking of portable autoclaves. What about manufacturing blades on-site? Large scale composites are still largely manual labour, and there are few pieces of tooling which themselves need to be one big piece. Mould can be split into sections rather easily.
- brandmeyer 5y agoManufacturing needs a highly controlled environment. The industry's trend has been towards simplifying the installation process as much as possible. Smaller crew, simpler equipment, less that can go wrong on-site, etc.
- bluGill 5y agoYou want as few humans off the ground as possible for safety reasons. Someone needs to get to the top of the tower to attach things, but as little as possible. Most wind farms (on shore) are in fields that the farmer has planted. you want to disturb the crop as little as possible while installing which means the factory will be elsewhere so that you don't need to tear up more crop in manufacturing.