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Jumbo-sized wind turbine transport: US startup Radia is developing a new jumbo-sized plane — dubbed The WindRunner — to transport mega wind turbine blades to onshore wind farms in a bid to boost power generation capacity, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company, led by MIT-trained rocket scientist and Rhode scholar Mark Lundstrom, says it is halfway through the development phase and has another four years to go until the plane is up in the skies. The Windrunner has already snagged its first customer and will be delivering turbines to a 1 GW project in Nevada once the plane is certified to fly.
A flying behemoth: The WindRunner is 80 feet longer than the world’s largest military aircraft and is designed to transport football field-sized turbine blades to hard to reach onshore locations. The plane can carry blades whose tips reach 300 feet higher than the current average, allowing for the production of twice as much energy as current onshore turbines do, WSJ writes.
Why is this important? Trains and trucks cannot carry wind turbine blades of this size, making them virtually impossible to transport to land locations. This limits their use to offshore projects using specialized vessels that face their own set of challenges.
