Due to serious damage to the concrete tower, the new wind turbine was blown up with a hub height of 164 meters. The facility belonged to the Jüchen A44n wind farm.
JÜCHEN. A good year ago, a new wind turbine collapsed in Haltern, and 18 other plants were then stopped. One has now been blown up
Due to serious damage to the concrete tower, a new wind turbine with a hub height of 164 meters was blown up in Jüchen on Sunday. The blasting of the entire system with rotor blades and machine house was necessary after a gradual dismantling was not possible for safety reasons. The system belonged to the Jüchen A44n wind farm. The other five facilities in the park are also dismantled for safety reasons. After the dismantling of the main components and the upper part of the tower, which is made of steel, the lower concrete part is also to be blown up.
The wind turbines of the wind farm have been standing still for months for safety reasons, after a construction-like wind turbine collapsed in Haltern in the Ruhr area last autumn. The wind turbine was completely destroyed. In Jüchen, too, damage to the tower was found in one of the six plants. The plants in Jüchen had not yet been handed over to the three operators at the time of decommissioning. This was actually planned for the end of 2021.
Wind turbine blown up in Jüchen - A44 was closed for blasting
After the dismantling next year, six new plants with a total output of 27 megawatts are to be built on the site of the wind farm, such as the Hamburg wind turbine manufacturer Nordex and the future operators - RWE, the city of Jüchen and the energy supplier New - announced on Sunday. They are said to produce green electricity for 26,000 households. The wind farm stands on a recultivated area of the Garzweiler lignite mine. For the blasting on Sunday morning, the Autobahn 44 was completely closed in both directions.
The plants are among the largest wind turbines on land in Germany. They have a hub height of 164 meters, the rotor blades reach a height of up to 239 meters. For comparison: the towers of the Cologne Cathedral have a height of around 157 meters.
After a wind turbine collapse: replacement of the concrete towers should have already started
Nordex announced in September that, that weak points in prestressed concrete were responsible for the collapse in holders. The tower was manufactured and built by a supplier company, from which Nordex claims to have separated. 18 other identical plants, all in Germany, Nordex stopped after the collapse in Haltern. According to the information, the replacement of the concrete towers on these systems has already started.
According to RWE, the wind farm is in the commissioning phase. At the end of 2021, the manufacturer should hand it over completely to RWE and its partners. ( dpa )