April 17 - Gruas Burger has helped erect the new generation wind farm, Valle De Los Vientos, in the Chilean region of Antofagasta for Enel GreenPower, using its Terex CC 2800-1 NT crawler crane.
The Valle De Los Vientos park comprises of 45 Vestas V100/2000 2 MW wind turbines with rotor diameters of 100 m. To erect these turbines, Gruas Burger's crane had to lift loads of up to 100 tonnes in weight and 80 m in height with a usual working radius of 18 m.
"Ground preparation is very important when performing lifts, and it is an aspect one should never skimp on, but there are ways to minimis costs in projects like this," said president and owner of Gruas Burger, Raul Burger.
"We are very experienced in erecting wind turbines, so we offered the developing company our services with the NT cranes so they only needed to build 5.5 m wide roads for the crane instead of 10 m, which is usually needed for a crawler crane," he added.
Whereas the track footprint of the Terex CC 2800-1 crawler cranes measures over 9 m, the track width of the Terex CC 2800-1 NT is only 5.3 m, which allowed Gruas Burger's crews to navigate the narrow roads.
Even with narrow tracks, the crane still offers the high lift capabilities customers expect from a 600-tonne capacity crane. Large 5 m x 1.4 m front and rear outrigger pads work in conjunction with two hydraulically operated 3 m x 2.4 m side outrigger pads to give the stability required for lifting heavy loads.
"After the access roads were prepared, and the turbine parts in place, we erected each turbine and then crawled with the fully erected crane to the next pad," explained Burger. "On average we erected one turbine per day and each turbine required seven lifts."
Chile currently has over 300 MW of wind power generation capacity, and the Valle De Los Vientos park accounts for 90 MW. The park is the first of three wind farms planned for the Antofagasta region, with the other two already approved.
