Civil engineering design of wind farm infrastructure: roads and assembly areas
Wind farm infrastructure design: we plan access, road network, cabling, foundations and logistics areas from a single source.
Well-considered infrastructure is the foundation of every successful wind energy project. We plan the complete infrastructure of your wind farm: from the access road through the internal road network and cabling to construction sites, foundations and logistics areas. This planning ensures efficiency, permittability and implementation.
Infrastructure comprises several building blocks. The access road serves to deliver the turbine components and must be suitable for heavy transport; a permanent access is often provided for maintenance. At each turbine, crane hardstandings are built for erection and dismantling, along with assembly, transshipment, storage, logistics and construction site facility areas. A distinction is made between areas used permanently and those used only during construction. The cabling connects the turbines with each other and runs as underground cable to the substation. Clearing may be needed for this, and routes may cross protected areas, which must be specially justified in the procedure. Important site criteria are a truck-capable access, the grid connection option and the right of use of the land. Clearing is part of the project and must be shown in the documents. The external connection can be a medium-voltage underground cable system several kilometres long.
For foundations, a distinction is made between shallow foundations and pile foundations. This also matters for later decommissioning: pile foundations are often problematic from a soil-protection perspective, whereas with shallow foundations concrete and reinforcement can be recycled separately. Gravel from crane hardstandings and roads can be reused, and whether crane hardstandings, access roads and cable routes are to be removed or further used, for example in repowering, depends on the permit documents and the conditions for the specific decommissioning. In the submission documents, the infrastructure is presented in the project description, including clearing and construction phases. The project boundary is defined for the specific project and presented comprehensibly in the submission documents, for traffic purposes as well as electrically. Whether a land-use zoning is required depends on the respective provincial law, local planning and the specific project; the location and extent of roads and assembly areas then also affect the rezoning procedure. For decommissioning and repowering, it pays to consider roads and hardstandings from the start.
You benefit from more than 30 years of experience in planning and implementing wind energy projects and from more than 2,300 MW of realised wind farm projects. We know the requirements of authorities and experts precisely. You receive all civil and electrical engineering aspects from a single source, and through early coordination with our biology and construction departments we identify risks early. The foundation is laid by the civil engineering concept of the preliminary design. Hand in hand with it runs the electrical engineering design including grid calculations; the detailed design follows for implementation. Aligning the areas with the land-use designation is supported by expert support for the rezoning procedure. For photovoltaic, there is PV infrastructure design.
