On Monday 13 December 2010, Ryan Dunn from the Wellington office was invited on a road trip aboard a large wind turbine transporter, delivering a top tower section from the Port of Auckland to Meridian’s Te Uku wind farm site near Raglan.

The completed Te Uku wind farm will consist of 28 Siemens 2.3 megawatt wind turbines, giving a total combined capacity of 64 megawatts, capable of powering approximately 30,000 average homes. To put it in perspective, at full capacity just one wind turbine at Te Uku would provide enough electricity to power all the homes within Raglan.

The logistics of transporting these overweight/over-dimension turbine components from port to site forms a major part of TDG’s inputs to Resource Consenting for wind energy projects. He accompanied a TranzCarr 9-axle trailer carrying a 36.0m long, 49 tonne tower section with a maximum diameter of 3.96m.

The day started early with pre-travel safety checks, after which my driver Biggsy and he headed off from the port at 5:00am sharp. Accompanied by three pilot vehicles (two at the front and one at the rear of our truck) we followed both a nacelle and a blade component truck out through the streets of Grafton, Mt Eden and Greenlane headed south via Great South Road to Drury where we joined the Southern Motorway. As well as observing the basic travel characteristics of the large transporter along the route, he also observed particular things such as:

• Piloting procedures and communication protocols (including communication with other trucks in the area via CB radio)
• Engine retarder use and its noise effects within urban areas (which was actually really quite quiet)
• Complex manoeuvres required to negotiate sharp turns (often utilising the whole road carriageway, travelling on the wrong side of the road and over traffic islands)
• Vehicle speeds (sometimes reaching 80km/h and exceeding speed limits in some places)
• Procedures around travel restrictions over and under bridges (where “crawl speeds” <10km/h were required)
• Protocols when encountering such things as roadworks, rail level crossings and schools (require verbal permission from KiwiRail reps before crossing a rail level crossing), and
• The interaction between the transporter pilots and general traffic to ensure safety and minimise delays to other road users (inclusive of colourful trucker language).

This last point was particularly relevant for travel over the steep, narrow and winding 4km section of road called the Raglan deviation. Upon reaching the site, we undertook a fast turnaround, swapping to an empty trailer ready to return to Auckland by 11:00am.

The return trip was much quicker however, travelling through Auckland with a large 3.0m wide trailer near 2:00pm was complicated amongst high levels of commuter traffic. Upon reaching the port the trailer was again prepared for another turbine component for a return trip the following day.

Information gathered on the transporter dimensions is enabling us to model the rear steering accurately using Autoturn.

Overall, a very informative and interesting trip, with plenty of driver skill shown to manoeuvre these huge loads. Work is expected to be completed with full commissioning of the wind farm by March 2011.