Clashindarroch Wind Farm Delivered
Our Team have completed the last deliveries of turbine components for the Clashindarroch Wind Farm, located near Huntly, Grampian, Scotland.
The scope of the project was to supply all ship discharge, cargo handling, port services, storage of components, reloading, consulting and provision of acceptable routes (which resulted in a multi-port delivery solution). Consisting of 18 Senvion wind turbine generators in total, the project took place between July and September this year and required Collett to provide permit applications and approvals, the escort of components, road transport and delivery to site, on site logistics, offloading and handling of blades on site, project management of logistics and client liaison.
The logistics and planning schedule for the wind farm deliveries were critical due to the manufacturing point of the towers being in Chepstow (approx. 600 miles from the site) meaning a 1,200 mile round trip by road. Therefore, considering the size of the tower sections, Collett devised a loaded vehicle profile to avoid Special Order BE16 applications for UK transport regulations, thus avoiding the additional high extra costs of towers to be shipped by sea to Scotland.
Furthermore, due to the requirement of the towers to be delivered on a JIT basis, the distance of 600 miles would deem this to be impossible due to various intangible problems en-route over this distance. Therefore, the recently developed Collett Grangemouth depot was used as a waypoint and stockpile area for the delivery of the tower sections. Thus a balance of tower sections were kept in the storage area at Grangemouth which could be called upon on a day to day basis within a 24 hr window for a JIT delivery to the crane pad on site. In addition this avoided congestion on the site, as the site layout and onsite road conditions were of a challenging nature.
For the blade, nacelle and hub components, Collett adopted a two port strategy utilising Inverness and their dedicated Port facility at Grangemouth.
Port of Inverness had room restrictions and availability issues for when the project was planned therefore, Collett planned to use Inverness for blades only. This allowed for a flexible and cost effective handling charge by using Collett's own crane mounted vehicles & lorry loaders to handle, load and transport the blades. Additionally the route favoured the permit application for the blades only.
Port of Grangemouth was used to accept hubs and nacelles by ship. Collett's Grangemouth depot offers an outside storage facility and heavy lift storage area complete with a 110 Tonne straddle carrier providing a cost effective solution. This provided ship discharge and storage for handling of the hubs and nacelles and allowed trailer reloading to be done on an ad-hoc basis to suit the JIT delivery plan, minimising the number of trailer resources required and standing time on site.
The early appointment of Collett’s services allowed good pre-planning of logistics, which were vital in order to allow a flexible cost effective solution to be planned and delivered.
Additionally, due to the sheer size of the site layout and the many kilometres of site access tracks and roads, Collett supplied a site delivery Team to work alongside the crane erection team so that a correct daily flow of components were fed to the crane side.
Delighted with the successful completion of the project, Senvion praised Collett for a job well done, with all components delivered safely and a first class team.
