Lifting System Enables Mountaintop Construction

Europe’s highest-altitude wind farm has been completed with the help of Scheuerle heavy-load vehicles.

The SwissWinds Development project is located near the small town of Ulrichen am Griessee in the Swiss canton of Valais at an elevation close to 2,500 meters above sea level. The biggest challenge of this project was the transportation of the plant components to the assembly site, according to a Cargo Equipment Experts’ statement. The route included negotiating Central Switzerland´s highest mountain pass, the Nufenen Pass.

The 35-meter-long rotor blades began their journey in All'Aqua (1,600 metres above sea level) and then traveled along the narrow and winding Nufenen Pass. The vehicles made nine hairpin bends with turning radii of only 15 meters.

"No other transport vehicle would have been able to better cope with this extreme transport assignment to our assembly area,” Martin Stromeier, site manager at SwissWinds Development, said. Scheuerle’s InterCombi combination with specially designed blade adapter was used to transport the turbine blades. In tight bends, the lifting and lowering function of the vehicle moves one side of the blade upwards by means of a radio transmitter so that the tip of the blade points toward the sky at an angle of up to 23 degrees, and allows the blade to"float" over obstacles.

This lifting and lowering device was also mounted on a self-propelled 6-axle InterCombi SP for transport of the tower sections. The towers were transported 800 meters from the front area of the intermediate storage facility to the final assembly point over a gravel road with a 15 percent slope.

The SwissWinds wind farm is scheduled to be commissioned in early 2012.

Photos show Scheuerle’s specially adapted transporters taking wind components through the Nufenen Pass. Courtesy of Cargo Equipment Experts CEE.