Wind Tower Foundations, Snowtown South Australia
The owner and developer of the Snowtown Windfarm developed a new blade to capture more wind energy at lower wind speeds.
The new blades increased the loads acting on the tower and foundations and the prototype blades could not be retro-fitted to an existing turbine and tower.
TGE was asked to design a foundation for a prototype tower and turbine to test the new blades. TGE carried out investigations of the site confirming hard-rock foundations and analysed, designed and observed the construction of the prototype foundation.
The hard-rock foundations allowed the design of an anchored foundation pre-stressed onto the rock to prevent uplift under high wind loads.
