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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

Do you transport something like this in pieces, or as a single blade?

The blades are transported in single pieces, on trucks with steered rear carriers, as in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTpZ5V4HrK4

The blades in this topic are about 4 times the length of the ones in the video. It's a whole different world.

I'm going to be stuck watching videos of these things being delivered all day now.

A German company says they can transport blades of up to 100m length as a single piece [1]. For longer things I'd guess there is no option other than to manufacture them on site or near-site, as the Danes are doing for offshore projects [2].

[1] https://www.doll.eu/de/produkte/schwertransport/nachlaeufer-...

[2] https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/wirtschaft-von-oben/wirtscha...

That is on land, there is a reason a lot of wind production is close to a harbor.

So near-site in practice means, near-harbor.

Possibly you can have an agile vessel doing the last stretch so that you can change that to ~near-sea.

the US Midwest has a ton of wind power, if you drive through there you have a decent chance of seeing a truck carrying a blade. pretty interesting stuff. obviously those are a lot smaller than this windmill though.

If you drive through Iowa, it seems like you will see nothing but windmills. Just an enormous amount of installed capacity.

I guess it makes sense that they put them near major roadways, for easier access, but I find driving through a wind farm to be intensely distracting. The rotation of the windmills during the day, and the strobing warning beacons at the top at night, really tend to pull my eyes off the road ahead.

The blade is usually manufactured as a single fiberglass piece. With how big this thing is I imagine it's manufactured somewhere directly at the shore, and just lifted onto a boat directly from the factory.

The base is segments (shaped like calamari rings), which are big but usually can be transported by road, but the big ones probably can't pass under bridges.

How technically challenging is building(?) printing(?) these pieces? Presumably they need to withstand enormous amounts of strain. Can you produce an impromptu factory anywhere, or does this require sophisticated equipment that benefits from fixed installations?

It's a pretty complex and manual process. You need tons of space, and it's usually built with composites. It's pretty challenging to inspect them for flaws once they are built too.

Afaik, they are built in dedicated factories but usually on the same continent (at least!) as where they are going to get installed.

> shaped like calamari rings

... but why calamari rings specifically?

Depends, regular ones as a single blade since they're assembled in the factory. But there are attempts to do it differently because of the inconvenience. A swedish company make wind turbine towers out of wood that can be assembled on site: https://modvion.com/

Here are some images to give you an idea of the size of large wind turbines https://growsverige.se/2023/02/11/storleken-svindlar-pa-nya-...

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