A new self-building wind turbine could completely revolutionize the wind energy industry. The WindSpider crane, which was developed by WindSpider, is a new and scaleable method that allows wind turbines to build themselves, removing the need for much of the typical workforce related to building a wind turbine.
Wind turbines are massive and expensive objects. In fact, the actual blades on the turbine are often so large that they require a crane to lift them. This requires fuel to run and people to operate the crane. But what if you could do away with a lot of the extra workforce and the crane was built into the turbine itself?
That’s the idea behind the WindSpider crane. The crane uses the turbine tower itself to lift the various parts of the turbine into place. And, since the crane is there with the turbine all the time, it makes maintenance, repowering, and decommissioning much easier, too. What’s even more impressive is that the crane can easily be scaled to over 1,500 tons with zero height limitations.
That means that bottom-fixed and offshore wind turbines could become much easier to build, as the large pieces could be transported to the turbine’s location via boat and then attached to the turbine itself using the built-in crane functionality. It’s a very novel idea that is already seeing a lot of interest from investors, and for good reason.
Having more scaleable energy solutions like the WindSpider crane could help us expand those fields of the energy industry greatly. Introducing new options for wind turbines will ultimately allow us to rely less on fossil fuels for energy production, allowing us to cut back on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions sent into the atmosphere every year, helping with climate change.
