| And once you put something that long on a trailer, getting it from the factory to the wind farm becomes a serious exercise in planning. Some of today’s offshore turbine blades are already more than 100 meters long. Siemens Gamesa’s B108 blade, for example, measures 108 meters, more than six times the length of the first offshore turbine blades installed at Vindeby in Denmark in 1991. But the challenge isn’t simply finding a truck big enough. A blade this size has to negotiate bends, bridges, narrow roads, steep sections and overhead obstacles. The transport equipment itself also needs to provide enough maneuverability to handle tight turns without damaging the blade or the surrounding infrastructure. And the route may need to be carefully surveyed long before the actual transport takes place. So while the final journey might look like “just another truck on the road”, there can be months of planning behind those few kilometers. Because when your cargo is over 100 meters long, even taking the next turn requires a strategy. |