11.05.2012

More wind farm rolls

The latest casualty of wind farm roads that are unsuited for cranes or big aerial lifts is a 103 metre WT1000 truck mounted aerial lift which rolled as it approached the Gordonbush wind farm in Scotland.

However the lift is just one of several examples of cranes or lifts over-tuning on wind farm sites in recent weeks. We understand that a 250 tonne crane rolled recently on a wind farm in the west of Ireland, with a further three big cranes said to have suffered a similar fate across Europe.

All possibly brought on by the exceptionally wet weather that many areas experienced in April and the start of May.

The truck mounted lift in Scotland was, we understand making its way from the main road to the site to carry out blade inspection work when it went too close to the soft verge causing it to slide into the ditch and over-turn. Thankfully the operator was not injured.
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Blade's WT1000 was heading to the Gordonbush wind farm when the verge of the road gave way

The ground in the area is very soft, with the terrain consisting largely of peat, so any recovery crane will require a substantial temporary hard standing. We understand that the recovery work will start next week.

UPDATE

The following statement has been received from the aerial lifts owner, Blade Access:

“We are pleased to confirm one of our 103 metre truck mounted platforms which was recently involved in a road traffic incident has now been successfully recovered.

Following notification of the incident, Blade Access immediately dispatched a site support team who deployed spill containment systems to protect local waterways which instantly eliminated any risk of oil contamination.

Fortunately and thanks to the local soft peat terrain, the platform and its boom sections have not been damaged in any way. Whilst superficial repairs are completed to the chassis body work, the platform manufacturer is now undertaking a precautionary detailed inspection of the platform and its components. Once certified, we expect the platform to return back to service in around three weeks time.

At the time of the incident the platform was not on hire and in turn provided no inconvenience to our client’s programme of works.

Following a number of recent large truck mounted platform deliveries, we were able to supply a replacement 103 metre Palfinger WT 1000 the very next morning allowing imminent site works to remain unaffected.

Maintaining open contact with our client, local authorities, third party contractors and the lifting/recovery team, the incident has been controlled with the highest levels of proficiency at every stage.

Having been highly commended by our client, I would personally like to thank the operational team at Blade for their impeccable display of professionalism from the incident occurring to the actual recovery of the unit.

Of course it is unfortunate that the incident occurred but our adept incident management has clearly demonstrated to both our client and their industry another reason why Blade Access can be preferred suppliers in comparison to smaller competitors with reduced resources."

Vertikal Comment

While this particular incident actually occured on a public road, the move by wind farms towards narrower/cheaper roads that cannot support the cranes and large aerial lifts needed to service the turbines, was a key element of the recent wind safety summit in Hamburg.

Wind turbine companies attending the event appeared to take the criticism on board, although early reports ‘from the coalface’ suggest that little has changed and there have been some classic near misses lately while lifting large rotors.

Obviously several years of cost cutting on roads cannot be undone overnight and it has yet to even get started. So in the meantime crane and lift companies need to take special care when sending equipment into some of these places. You can be sure that when your machine rolls it will be all your fault and nothing at all to do with the inadequate roads.