Current Wind Turbine Generators (WTG) erecting and some maintenance procedures rely on the use of at least two cranes, being one a high tonnage one. These last ones present severe limitations regarding: safety (overhead loads), cranes availability for towers over 120 m and nacelles over 100 t (t=1,000 kg), logistics constrains (permits), expensive transportation (up to 40 trucks are needed), environmental impact (trucks & cranes pollution, large civil works with an extensive tree cutting), need a large operators’ team, requires a long on-site installation time, and because loads hangs from a cable hook, it cannot operate for blades when the wind exceeds a speed of 8 m/s.
On top of the huge cost of these cranes, all these limitations imply delays which have a very large impact for the production losses of the WTG. In addition, there are lots of risks for operators involved in the erecting and maintenance operations.
LEUNAMME has developed a patented KoalaLifter System, a disruptive lifting device that uses friction collars to embrace the WTG tower to make possible an autonomous self-climbing capability, eliminating the need of high tonnage cranes and their known limitations. Our system: operates without workers close to the loads, it is transported in a 20 m truck without specific permits, needs only one operator, it is installed in minutes, holds the component tight to our equipment so it can operate with winds up to 25 m/s, and therefore, reduces drastically the WTG downtime.
KoalaLifter has already developed, built and tested a full-scale prototype in a real environment for exchanging blades up to 10 t. KoalaLifter variants considered are: KL-BLADE-B20, a blade exchanger with a 20 t load capacity; KL-NACELLE-N30, for nacelle components up to 30 t; and CASTOR, a 150 t system for WTG erecting.
KoalaLifter EIC Accelerator project main objectives are: (i) to extent product range; (ii) to validate and certify products and processes; (iii) to prepare for commercialization; and (iv) to protect, exploit and communicate our solution.
