Not only do the complete turbines have to be moved, transferring knowledge is another important aspect of developing wind farms in new regions. Having a global network, as well as co-ordinating international teamwork, becomes vitally important to guarantee the safe delivery of a major wind farm project within budget and on time.
A Global Wind Energy Division was established by deugro, and its people are especially trained and dedicated to wind energy from its global offices network. The motto ‘think global act local’ ensures a flexible and country-specific approach, backed up by deugro’s high international standards and global corporate strategy.
The company’s latest success story is the delivery of Meridian Energy’s Project West Wind in New Zealand, one of the most challenging wind farms the company has seen in the world. Project West Wind is currently nearing completion and the transportation is expected to be finished by mid August 2009.
It took deugro over two years of thorough project planning to overcome the many logistical difficulties related to this project. Most of these difficulties were due to the geographical conditions of the wind farm location and the project consent restrictions. A special barge wharf had to be built within the confines of the wind farm to provide accessibility for the heavy or over dimensional turbine components.
Article continues below…International vessels shipped the turbines from Europe and Asia to Picton on the top of the South Island of New Zealand; from there, motorised barges were used to continuously distribute the turbine components over Cook Strait to the project site at Oteranga Bay on the North Island. From the project wharf, specially constructed trucks and trailers were used to haul all turbine components up the steep mountain ridge – up to 18 degrees – to their final locations.
Project West Wind provided quality project management involving five countries on three different continents.
