The way to heaven leads through the eye of a nee dle Before the components of a wind turbine system tower segments the nacelle and the rotor blades can be installed on site under maximum technical demands and rise up to a height of 140 meters 460 feet they have to arrive first And that entails a logistical effort of mam moth proportions due to their size and their weight We ve all seen the long load trailers carrying the ro tor blades in parking facilities along the freeway up to 60 meters 200 feet long they re parked there until traffic subsides around 10 p m and they can continue their jour ney By that time they ve already overcome a number of obstacles Traveling on highways or freeways is no special feat at least that s what one might think However the comparatively small radii of freeway entrance ramps now and then make it necessary to lift the load across the guard rails Plus the special heavy duty trucks have to leave the freeway at some point in time to reach their destinations on backroads Unsurprisingly wind turbine manufacturers make maximum use of trains and riverboats to transport the huge components across long distances but even so the moment of truth when the heavy cargo has to hit the road will inevitably arrive And that has been the case in creasingly often since wind power has begun to burgeon A job with no routines We know when a transfer starts explains Flo rian Dufresne but we can never be sure when it will arrive As amazing as that may sound these jobs are never routine business Every route every transport is unique Even though the title of his job with wind turbine manufacturer Senvion is that of a local transport man ager Dufresne no doubt ranks among Europe s most experienced logisticians for special transports of wind power systems He handles a thousand of them per year A job that keeps him on the road No says Du fresne who manages almost every part of it from his desk at the office Asked if in the digital age he had ac cess to a database with cornering radii overhead clear ances the widths of underpasses and the load ratings In bottlenecks like this one in the French village of Lussac les Églises the blade lifter raises the rotor blade by up to 50 degrees The length of the vehicle on the ground then shrinks to the dimensions of a normal truck and the truck moves forward in creep mode Tight corners unpaved roads and larger slope angles pose challenges to transporting the heavy components 63 62

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