Road route planning for transporting wind turbines in Europe

Abstract

The upward trend in wind energy production had created a challenge for the roadway system. The road infrastructure had to accommodate a wide range of complex vehicle configurations for the transport of wind turbine components (nacelles, tower sections and rotor blades), which are often considered oversize/overweight loads by the transport authorities. The paper provided an overview of established difficulties encountered during the road transport of wind turbine components, examining how the growth in the size of them, had affected the transport industry and the route assessment process. The authors proposed an operational planning strategy, based on maximum swept path width, to facilitate the identification of optimal routes for rotor blades transport. The methodology, which does not substitute a rigid swept path analysis, could be used by the road managing authorities for checking planimetric restrictions and constraints on their road infrastructure and for a ready evaluation of possible abnormal road transport corridors.