World’s biggest cargo plane will transport next-gen wind turbines

A giant new plane is being built to move wind turbines around the world.

Set to revolutionise the way wind turbine parts are transported, the WindRunner is specifically built to carry wind turbine blades as long as 104 metres (341 feet).

Calling itself a “catalyst in renewables”, the company behind the cargo plane hopes it will  spread low-energy electricity to far flung locations, to ‘radically expand the scope and scale of the onshore wind energy industry’. It will also allow wind turbines to be manufactured in remote locations “where the most promising resources lie”.

While extensive testing and simulations have already been conducted in wind tunnels, commercial operations are expected by late 2027.

Is there a need to transport wind turbines by air?

It may seem unusual for an energy company to switch to aviation, but US-based energy company Radia created the WindRunner when it faced a problem developing its GigaWind onshore turbines. 

Most wind turbine components are transported by road on specialised trucks or by rail for longer distances. But Radia found that this wouldn’t be feasible for their super-sized turbine plans and so built a cargo plane to transport them by air instead.

Manufacturers  already struggle with transporting blades that span 70 metres (230 feet) – and can cause traffic to back up while being moved around.. Roads have to be closed, agricultural land sometimes has to be driven through to avoid narrow country roads, and a police escort is needed due to the wide, heavy-load-bearing vehicles.

The groundbreaking WindRunner aircraft will be the first to solve this logistical problem and secure the future of giant wind turbines with blades that span a vast 104 metres (341 feet). This will allow wind farms to become more cost-effective.

Before deciding on a purpose-built, fixed-wing aircraft, the company looked at several historical and existing aerotransportation solutions. 

Realising quickly that it is impractical to modify existing cargo aircraft to be larger, Radia considered buoyant aircraft such as blimps, which were ruled out as they struggle to lift super-heavy objects, are slow in speed, and require a vast cleared area of about 150 acres for landing and take-off. 

Helicopters were also considered but were determined not to have sufficient payload capacity to lift or ground a heavy blade or enough significant speed, and were also considered dangerous carriers due to possible wind gusts. 

Why can’t wind turbines be designed with segmented blades?

Right now, wind turbines are made up of intricate components assembled onsite – however, blades always come in one piece, hence the transportation issue. 

For 20 years, manufacturers have tried a wind turbine design that uses segmented blades, but, according to Radia, “the failure rate for these non-monolithic blades has been proportionally higher”.

Blade segmentation is limited not only by the manufacturing costs of using more raw materials but also by design. A narrower, slender blade has a total blade area of less than 14 to 16 per cent, which results in a net performance loss of 3 to 8 per cent.   

Radia considered manufacturing its super-sized blades onsite but quickly dismissed this idea as turbines require controlled, high-tech factory environments and highly skilled workers to facilitate their precise manufacture. 

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The turbine aircraft is a giant compared to a typical Boeing 747 plane

The WindRunner is massive, spanning 108 metres (356 feet) long by 80 metres (261 feet) wide, so its expansive cargo bay – 105 metres long by 7.3 metres wide and tall – can easily accommodate giant turbine blades. 

This makes the WindRunner will be 239 per cent longer than a Boeing 747-400F. The aircraft design is 80 times bigger than that of the world’s largest military carrier – and longer than the length of Wembley Stadium in England.

However, the plane has been designed not just for its capacity potential – it also supports easy access to wind farm sites. The plane has a specialised loading and unloading system at the aircraft’s nose so blades can efficiently be manoeuvred from the cargo door, reducing time spent at wind farms.

The cargo plane will allow more onshore wind projects to be developed in remote locations “where the most promising resources lie”, Radia says, as it can operate from semi-prepared airstrips as short as 1,800 metres (6,000 feet) due to the aircraft’s “robust landing gear and advanced navigation systems”.

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In terms of fuel efficiency, the aircraft has two advanced engines that allow it to reach cruise speeds of up to Mach 0.6 (approximately 740 km/h) while carrying payloads of up to 72,575 kg (160,000 lbs). 

The environmental impact and carbon emission implications of the aircraft and how they compare to existing transportation logistics have not yet been disclosed.

To make this specialised design a new standard in cargo aircraft, the company is now working with aerospace manufacturers and suppliers, including Leonardo, an Italian manufacturer that will develop the fuselage, and Spanish company Aernnova, which will supply wings and engine pylons.

Radia plans to establish WindRunner operating bases around the world to serve different regions and has secured its first contract to deliver turbines to a gigawatt-scale wind farm. The company has begun working on production of the WindRunner, which could be in operation as early as the end of 2027.

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