Get FinancingSouth Korean Wind Farm Turns To Manitowoc MLC650 For Turbine Installation
Shinui Petra, a leading equipment rental company and long-time Manitowoc customer, was the first in South Korea to obtain a Manitowoc MLC650 and has put the lattice boom crawler crane to work installing 4.8-megawatt wind turbines for DaeMyung Energy’s mountaintop site in Hwasun-gun, Jeollanam-do, in the southwestern part of the country. The crane is fitted with the optional 11.5-foot (3.5-meter)-wide boom kit, which has 19.7 inches (500 millimeters) of extra width vs. standard sections and enables the crane to complete tasks that require a long boom plus luffing jib configuration while maintaining the same compact footprint. The Hwasun-gun wind farm is the third site where the boom kit has been used.
The Project
The wind farm is located in a mountainous region that makes access and construction a challenge. Getting to the site involved traversing a steep, narrow, and winding access road, but the compact dimensions of the MLC650 helped the crew get the crane to the site in 45 loads. The main boom was assembled in air while suspended above the access road. Manitowoc’s Fast Aligning Connection Technology with hydraulically actuated pins made the process of getting the four 11.5-ft-wide inserts lined up quickly and securely.
“Limits from local government authorities meant the space on the jobsite to position the crane was strictly limited to 30 by 50 meters, to preserve surrounding trees and limit damage to the ground surface,” says Shinui Petra President and CEO Choi Byung Eun. “The only real competitor to the MLC650 needs a working radius of 144 feet, which immediately ruled it out.”
The Crane
The MLC650 with its VPC-Max counterweight technology was the clear choice to install all 11 wind turbines on the site, each of which included 93.6-ton (85-metric-ton) nacelles situated at 426.5-ft (130-m) heights. The VPC-Max technology adds 55 t (50 mt) of extra lifting capacity to the crane’s standard 716 t (650 mt). The variable-position counterweight system eliminates the requirement of a counterweight on the carbody to streamline the operation. The MLC 650 is configured with a 479-ft (146-m) main boom with a 25-ft (7.6-m) extended upper boom point and 440 t (400 mt) of counterweight and is working at a 92-ft (28-m) radius.
“For these kinds of challenges, there is no other solution,” says Choi. “Some of our customers will not consider anything other than the MLC650 because of its compact size and reduced impact on access roads and soil conditions. Inland wind towers normally sit at the top of mountains where space is very tight, or near the coast where the soil is softer. The MLC650 produces less ground pressure because its weight is distributed through the crawlers as evenly as possible. Also, it only requires ground preparation within the perimeter of the tracks rather than across the entire swing radius, because the VPC-Max remains suspended, so there are huge savings.”
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Source: Manitowoc