Author Archives: Carlos Bravo

Site visits and information management tools

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This post complete the information of the previous article on how to plan a site visit for a renewable energy project.

I will try to answer this question: what is the better tool to manage the information obtained on site?

There are several very useful mobile apps that can help us finding the target locations and geolocate the position of all relevant elements of the project (wind turbines, substation, roads, crane pads, etc.).

They can also help us obtaining and storing information in an efficient and organized way.

Although none of these software has been specifically created for the wind business´s needs, they offer very useful features that could make our lives easier during a site visit.

As they are mobile apps, we should make sure we have enough battery and that is why I always recommend bringing a portable charger with you.

Google Earth / Google maps

These two apps are by far the most popular. Anybody who is familiar with the desktop software will rapidly recognize their strengths integrated in a very powerful GUI.

They allow the user to load kml files with very valuable information such WTG positions or road alignments or even connect to maps edited and stored in our personal Google account

I see three main drawbacks here:

  • The basemap loaded in the background is limited to the basic formats: Street, Terrain, Traffic, Satellite, etc. Unfortunately they do not offer the chance to insert our customized maps as a background.
  • The geolocation is based on the device´s built-in GPS, but the background map data is loaded only if network is available – and this could be a big risk in remote areas.
  • They are not really prepared to create and store points of interests with comments and link personal photos taken in the area of study – or at least, not as I would like.

Avenza maps

This app uses the device´s built-in GPS so that the correct positioning does not depend on the availability of the network.

One of the main advantages compared to the traditional GPS mapping apps like “Gaia gps”, “Google Maps” or “Google Earth” is that Avenza maps allows the user to import our own customized maps in different file formats such as geopdf, geotiffs.

These maps can be any kind of project drawings created with GIS tools such as QGIS or ArcMap.

This app can be used for free. With the free version we can download up to a certain number of maps at a time (usually 3). There is also is also Pro version which includes more features and increases the possibilities.

It also includes the option to create a store account. It is not required but is recommended though.

For more information about this tool, I recommend you go directly to the official web.

Maprika

This is a tracking map app used mainly by hiking lovers.

Initially, it looks like a very simple app without any special charm. However, it offers similar functionalities to “Avenza maps” and I personally consider it gives a good service to the actual needs in a site visit.

The main advantages are:

  • We track our routes and the elevation information (longitudinal profiles) is registered as well.
  • The photos taken along the routes are georeferenced and can be visualized over the route.
  • There is the option to add “Places of interest” with comments.
  • We can create our customized maps either by using the app or from the desktop tool called “Maprika map designer”. See below a link with a tutorial explaining how to do it.

As a drawback, we can considerate the lack of confidentiality: any map uploaded containing relevant wind farm information would be available to any user from the server.

Furthermore, it is quite easy to upload a map to the server but deleting is not as straightforward.

Here is the link to the website:https://www.maprika.com/

Road AI from Vaisala (old Vionice)

I leave to the end which, from my point of view, is the most promising from all the apps listed here and, surprisingly, maybe the less popular: Road AI

The first time I heard about this tool was in a Finish project I was involved in.

One of the contractors used to work with it and it ended up being a really nice discover.

Although addressed to cover infrastructure management, it can be “recycled” to work as an information management tool for site visiting. The mobile application provides a dynamic and flexible way to collect, manage and deploy data in a user friendly environment.

The main strengths are:

  • The user can record videos and make photos of the construction site which will directly be stored and available in a cloud service. E.g. We can make videos using a phone holder on the windscreen to record routes and the time and the GPS location will also be saved.
  • Make annotations associated to the audio-visual material recorded on site.
  • View all of the recorded routes and sites together with the annotations and metadata using the map interface available through a normal browser application.
  • We can share this information with anybody inside your organization or with a client.
  • It also allows to use filters and requests to visualize data following a certain criteria with a similar philosophy than in a GIS environment.

Surprisingly, it is difficult to find any reference to this application out from the local Finnish market. Only a few references are found in works at UK.

This is a link to the first of a series of video tutorials explaining the way to use and take most of the system (sorry it is in Finnish):

All in all, the proposals presented here are only a sample among a big offer presented in the market. Any tool with similar properties would work well enough used in a proper way. It is just a matter of personal preference as long as an ad hoc and convincing system is deployed and released into the market. Maybe one day…

How to plan a site visit for a renewable energy project

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Today many resources can make the engineer life´s easier helping create a renewable energy project in any spot of the world.

Powerful GIS and CAD software and an incredible amount of data available from either public or private entities make possible designs with a sufficient level of accuracy to have good cost estimations, even at early stages of the project.

However no tool is good enough to give you the amount of information a site visit can provide. This is a step that can give a boost of extra quality to the design process.

Whenever possible, doing a visit to the project area is highly recommendable.

There are many circumstances which could make it impossible, such as aggressive delivery dates, excessive travel distances or lately pandemics.

Also priorities matters: we cannot compare the preliminary work needed for a tender phase in a very early stage with the final detailed execution design of a constructive wind farm project.

In this article I collected some tips to successfully plan a Site Visit:

Transport

Hiring a 4x4 car (4 Wheel Drive or similar) is a must. Take into account that we will usually find unpaved roads in uncertain conditions or even no roads at all.

Depending on the actual state, it would be wise sometimes pulling over, park the car and go to the targeted place walking.

Furthermore, companies are already offering already internally a 4x4 off road driver training. We can find a lot of difficulties and a skilled drive behind the wheel is a blessing. See below the state of a track in a recent site visit… Yes, we were able to arrive home safe.

Food and breaks

It could be the case that the site is in the middle of nowhere without direct access to any populated village. Even if that is not the case, we will have to assess the convenience of having lunch in a restaurant or canteen with the risk of losing valuable time in the travel. Anyway, we must prepare and take with us some food (e.g. sandwich and fruit would be a good combination) and enough bottled water for the whole journey. Short breaks every 3-4 hours to have some rest and eat some snacks is also highly recommendable. A well planned visit should have account for this moments and there should not be excuses for skipping them.

Clothing and HSE

For a good feet protection, construction security boots with reinforced toe will serve well enough. If construction has not started yet, hiking boots could be another option. Waterproof resistant trousers or, alternatively, with resistant fabric are also recommended. On the other hand, we should follow some common sense rules such as taking a hiking cagoule (raincoat) if we are expecting rain or a cap, sun glasses and sun protection for hot and sunny days.

A careful study of particular conditions at the project site shall be done to avoid any surprise.

Reflective vests were needed in a visit I made to Sweden because the wind farm was in an hunting ground. Anybody without proper clothes hiking in the mountains was in danger of being shot.

Another example was a visit I recently made to Australia. It was in December and the wave of forest fires was at its peak. Of course, temperatures raised easily to 35-40ºC and the initial temptation was to use short sleeved T-shirts. The fact is that the project area was full of ticks and a complete protection of the body was required to avoid any undesired surprise. I found myself shaking some of them out of my shoulders.

Visit planning

To make the most of our trip, we need to carefully plan our journeys beforehand.

Here goes a proposal with some key aspects. How to organize them will depend on the particular circumstances of the project:

  • If a route survey has already been done, follow the route sketched from the point of discharge (usually a maritime port) of the WTG components to the wind farm site and make sure that the report matches the reality. If there is not a route survey in place, try to find alternatives on site. If there is more than one option, we can use one route to go and other route to return.
  • Visit to the nearest towns or villages to assess the best place to stablish central headquarters and/or employee’s accommodations. A project execution phase will normally take, in the best scenario, several months. Finding a place within a one-hour radius to the construction site with leisure offer and good services will contribute to a keep the teams spirit up. As a rule of good practice, it is recommendable talking with the locals, as they will always be able to provide valuable information.
  • Go to commercial quarries close to the site. It is always good to know quality and properties of the available material, unit costs and availability. In general, no appointment is required but it would be a rule of good practice calling before to know whether anybody can receive us.
  • If not already defined, search for possible places to stablish the site compounds.
  • Inspection of suitable areas that may serve as storage points for the WTG components.
  • Check all the WTG positions one by one. As a rule of thumb, experience says that a realistic planning should contemplate a properly assessment of a range between 10 to 15 WTG locations. Of course, it will always depend on the site conditions, the state of the existing roads and how far the positions are from the nearest driveable path.
  • Visit to the substation area and the point of connection to the existing electrical network.

Of course, there will be always unexpected events that we will have to handle once on site. However, taking the good habit of following these rules before travelling reduces the odds of facing undesired surprises as well as gives the engineer the chance to work in a more efficient way and even enjoy the journey.

Tower cranes: a real alternative to lattice boom cranes?

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The constant search for higher rated power, taller towers and longer blades has pushed wind turbine manufacturers in an arms race to secure a position in an extremely competitive market.

Today in the onshore market there are machines with rated power close to 6MW, hub heights in a range of 150-165m and blades longer than 80 m. Several projects are currently under development considering these massive sizes.

Lately I have had the opportunity to analyse in depth a new solution which is emerging as an alternative to the traditional lattice boom cranes: the tower cranes.

I have analysed two scenarios, one with the standard lattice boom crane and an alternative scenario with the tower crane.

Standard scenario: lattice booms crane

Lattice boom cranes such as the Liebherr LG1750 have been the standard solution for the installation of the latest generation of turbines, with a tower height in a range up to 140+m.

This type of crane can be moved fully assembled between positions under certain assumptions (such as a very low road longitudinal slope and minimum road width of more than 6m).

If the crane has to be dismantled a substantial area for the boom assembly and disassembly process will be needed (in red in the image below).

Other characteristics that can have an impact on the project are:

  • A mountainous landscape: in this case the boom assembly area would be even more essential. This will have a substantial impact of civil works cost.
  • Very high installation rates (such as 3 or 4 turbines per week). The limited stock of lattice boom cranes suitable for this hub heights worldwide create a risk: either you book the cranes two years in advance (giving up the possibility of changing the schedule) or you wait - with the risk of losing the crane availability slot.

Alternative scenario: tower cranes

The idea of using tower cranes for wind turbines installation is not new in the onshore sector.

Said that, as far as I was aware of, the use of this typology of cranes has been negligible in the last few years.

Not so many references can be found in America or Europe. One example would be the installation of Gamesa’s G114 of 2,5MW 156m steel tower at the Borja Wind farm (Spain). The crane used was the Liebherr 1000 EC-B 125.

Common sense tells me that the experience turned out not to be very positive (otherwise I presume that the concept would have been replicated, while that does not seem to be the case).

More recently, new models from Krøll Cranes have been used in wind farms at the opposite side of the planet, in Thailand and Australia.

Big players like ALE are suggesting that this new concept is reliable.

One of the main references is the Theparak wind farm project in Thailand, where 60 V136-3.0 MW where installed using this crane.

Here we have a list of some of the projects installed in Thailand with tower cranes:

The main pros of the tower crane are:

  • Road width required: only 4.5 m (even as little as 3.5 m according some sources).
  • Cranes boom is only 70 m long.
  • Advanced crane bases allow savings in the critical path.
  • Lower minimum lifting radius compared to lattice boom areas.
  • Installation rates about 2 hours per component. An installation rate of 1 WTG every 4 days has been reached in the Thai projects.
  • Operational up to wind speeds of 15m/s.

On the other hand, cons would be:

  • Lack of experience of the operators with these new set of cranes and low offer worldwide.
  • Uncertainty on the actual installation rates due to insufficient track record.
  • Real installation costs are still unknown.

Depending on the characteristics of the project, Kroll cranes has available these models:

How would an hardstand layout adapted to both the tower crane and the new generation of turbines look like?

It seems that a tower crane could work using a standard hardstand without the boom area:

Some 3d models where created on real WTG locations to assess the actual impact on cost of this new configuration. Quantity reductions in topsoil stripping, excavation and fill material may lead to a cost reduction around 5000€ per hardstands (being conservative).

A nice image with a 3D model of the hardstand analysed is included below:

Even if potential savings in the civil works seem to be easy to achieve, a real total project cost reduction can be confirmed only considering the actual installation costs, which are not so clear at this moment.

Are tower cranes going to be a more mainstream solution in the future?

Only time will tell.

Addenda (21/04/2021)

I have received this email from Jasper from Lighthouse projects. I think it
can be useful to other readers.

Regarding the tower cranes in compare to Crawler crane I would like to share with you some experience.

I have worked 2 years ago at windpark Krammer which consists out of 34 Enercon E115 turbines on a dyk with no space for storage components or installation of the cranes.Therefore we have used 2 Liebherr EC1000 Tower cranes in the project to build the wind turbines.

My experience is that with the limited space on site it is easier to install the crane.  Another benefit is that crane capacity because the crane can lift up to 100t  we could pre assemble the rotor and generator up front and lift the generator in one lift which is efficient. In addition what we saw is that you can lift longer you can lift up to 12 m/s or more.

A disadvantage of this type of crane is that it must be extended at some point. Mast sections must then be placed in between so that the hook of the crane becomes higher.

Infraworks for due diligence and preliminary designs

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If you either work for a WTG manufacturer or any electric utility the situation in which you are asked to do a complete analyse of a project very quickly (like in 2 or 3 days) is very common.

You are usually asked to do this task for several reasons:

  • Preparation of a first rough layout with preliminary quantities.
  • To compare different alternative WTG layouts.
  • For a technical due diligences.

Until not so many years this type of assessments was done using the specialized design software: MDT, Civil 3D, Istram-Ispol, Clip, etc.

These programs are more focused on a detailed design and the processes are not easy to adapt to a different scenario, where quick results are required.

In the last years Infraworks has emerged as a powerful alternative.

It is a planning and design platform from Autodesk that has experienced an impressive development. It offers a bunch of very useful tools that can be easily adapted to the BoP design of a wind farm.

Some of the principal qualities are:

  • It allows engineers to quickly create a preliminary design in a realistic environment, making possible to position the point of view anywere in the wind fare and immediately be able to visualize the existing conditions.
  • The program supports data from multiple sources: GIS (shapefiles, geodatabases, etc), CAD, raster, and all kind of BIM-data. These data is integrated into an interactive 3D model.
  • Cloud technology is integrated through BIM 360. Different users from the same team can work dynamically on the same projects in remote - i.e. from any point in the planet, a feature especially useful in these "work from home" days.
  • Multiple alternatives called “Proposals” can be generated for the same project.
  • The program allows to extract quantities, create shadow analysis, analize conditions with style maps using “style rules”, etc.
  • It is that it is very user-friendly: it takes only a few days to learn the basics and start doing your own projects.

One of its major advantages included in the last releases is that it is possible to import detailed designs from other software such as 3Ds Max, Civil 3D or Revit.

What I like the most is the dynamic flow of work implemented in the most recent versions between Infraworks and Civil 3D. In this sense, I like to think about Infraworks as a good complement to Civil 3D. We can either:

  • Start the design in Civil 3D and export it to Infraworks.
  • Create the predesign directly in Infraworks feeding the model with data available in all kind of source formats: shapefiles, raster, etc.

The synchronization between both programs is not bidirectional: any change done in the Civil 3D model is automatically included in the Infraworks model but not the other way around.

Going more deeply in what the program can offer, here are some comments specific for the wind farm BoP items:

Crane pads

The software offers a quick way to obtain quantities for big construction areas such as crane hardstands.

The option “Land Areas & Grading Behaviours” allows the user to easily calculate quantities for gradings and landfills.

One point to improve is that currently there is no way to export this data to any other format: the information must be extracted "manually" to an external BoQ.

Foundations:

It works in a similar way as explained before with the hardstands.

For example, we can quickly model the foundation bottom pit and calculate the excavation volumes.

We can do it to analyse a certain position or, taking advantage from GIS format files and other formats, do an overall analysis of all the positions.

Roads

Infraworks has two typologies of roads, which will be used depending on the needs of both the designer and the project:

  • Planning roads: These are lightweight roads that use spline geometry. You can add planning roads to a model or import roadway data as planning roads. This format does not allow to extract quantities from the model.
  • Component roads: these are configurable roads in cross section, vertical and horizontal geometry. They provide a precise control of geometry and grades. This is the type of road we are interested in when creating a BoP design in a wind farm because they have available features such as the grading tool and the mass balance quantification.

The interesting thing about this tool is that we can have a full control of all the parameters from a 3D environment and we can export to quantities to a .csv file format.

Additionally, the intersections between roads are automatically created and very easy to handle and edit.

Drainage

Hydraulics analysis and drainage calculations are hard to deliver in few hours - at least if you want to do a good job.

However, Infraworks offers a useful and easy module to deal with this matter. Some of the main available services are:

  • Watershed analysis: it includes point watershed creation, watershed analysis along roads and calculation of flows for a calculated watershed according to different methods (rational, regression, etc).
  • Culvert design analysis with automated culvert placement, culvert analysis and culvert reporting
  • Roadway inlet and pipe analysis, including automated inlet and pipe placement and inlet and pipe design analysis.

As a drawback, it is worth point out that drainage tools are only available in combination with a BIM 360 account.

Furthermore, depending on the kind of service required, we will need to have "cloud credits" available for certain processes such as culvert analysis.

In any case, it is difficult to find in the market a tool that gives such a powerful and interactive tool for preliminary drainage calculations.

Creation of realistic videos

Useful realistic videos or tours around the model can be created in a very easy way. They could not only look really fancy in a presentation but also are useful to assess whether there is a major mistake in the predesign. You ave an example at the beguinning of this article: the creation of this video took no more than 15 minutes from when the model was ready.

Other options:

There is also the option to create advanced customized cross section profiles.

This could be of great use to model other elements linear elements such medium voltage electrical cable trench or high voltage lines.

Final comments

Beyond all the great functionalities described so far, we must not lose the perspective: as it is now, Infraworks is not intended for a full detailed design. As a user you frequently feel that the program lacks "advanced capabilities" that would be highly appreciated.

Autodesk is aware that the software has a great potential and the company is working constantly to improve the product. To have a good idea of the expected developments in future releases I recommend to visit the webpage “Infraworks Public Roadmap”:

InfraWorks Public Roadmap – April 2020

These new developments are based on the feedback given by the users. Suggestions and proposed new features are posted in the “Infraworks Idea Forum”. I have personally posted some of them myself.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/infraworks-ideas/idb-p/129/tab/most-recent

I also include the link to the Youtube official channel which I consider a good audio-visual reference for those who want to crack on with the software:

In short, Infraworks is already a tool to take into consideration, not only in preliminary designs but also as a support for final designs.

It will be interesting to see whether future developments will transform in a main reference for designers - not only for wind farm projection, but also for all kind of civil works modelling.