Freyssinet, your turnkey partner for tall concrete towers for onshore wind farms
Freyssinet has developed a dedicated turnkey solution for the design and construction of tall concrete towers for wind turbines, allowing project owners and developers tap into stronger winds at higher elevations and thus maximize the energy produced and improve projects economics.
The Freyssinet tower design, made of precast concrete sections assembled by post-tensioning, can be adapted to any turbine, and towers can be either fully in concrete or hybrid with a steel section at the top to adapt to the desired turbine hub height and each specific turbine’s requirements.
An innovative and unique construction method
The erection method is unique as it uses a purpose-designed equipment, the Eolift©. Developed and patented by Freyssinet, this method allows the erection of towers (up to 160 meters) at wind speed up to 20 m/s without using cranes*. The Eolift© equipment can work throughout the year, unlike standard cranes commonly used for wind tower erection which are limited at much lower wind speeds and have a low utilization factor. It also allows the main segments assembly works to take place at low level, thus increasing the safety of the operations.
A fast cycle of erection…
A cycle of less than ten days for erection and equipment transfer can be achieved for towers of 145 meters in height.
…with the use of local resources
The concrete design also allows the use of local resources, thus increasing local content. Combined with the Eolift erection method, it altogether reduces the carbon footprint of projects as compared to steel towers erected by cranes.
*As such the method is dubbed “craneless” since only a small crane is used for the preassembly of the segments and to also erect the nacelle on a short section of the tower top, initially placed on the foundation, prior to the start of the Eolift© erection process.
Wind farm in Trairi, Brasil
Wind towers built with the Eolift© method.
In partnership with GE (Alstom), Freyssinet designed and built 36 wind turbines equipped with Alstom ECO 122 2.7 MW turbines at a hub height of 119 meters.