World's largest plane could transform wind farm deployment

Transporting wind-turbine blades by road is no easy task. Stretching for 50m or more, they make driving round even the slightest of bends in a narrow rural road a complex logistical challenge.

This means that current deployments are in “the most cherry-picked locations,” said Paul Hanna, marketing executive at energy company Radia. “You can’t turn corners. You can’t get them under bridges – and, for those that you can, it literally takes a year-and-a-half to plan to move, by ground, one blade from the manufacturing facility or the port to the windfarm.”

Blades on future turbines will be even longer – maybe 100m or more, which Radia claims is much too long to travel by road. But what if disruption could be avoided by transporting blades by aircraft, landing close to the windfarm site? 

The Colorado firm aims to provide that with WindRunner, which will be the world’s largest aircraft if the project is successful. Aerospace multinational Leonardo will develop the fuselage, Radia announced at Farnborough, while Spanish company Aernnova will partner on development of the aircraft’s wing and engine pylons, and New York consultancy AFuzion will provide safety and certification consulting.

The aircraft is designed to fly turbine blades as long as a football pitch direct to windfarm sites, landing on ‘semi-prepared’ dirt runways as short as 1,800m.

“The innovation that we’re bringing to this aircraft is how we’re bringing together the existing product catalogue of things that have already been certified and are flying on Airbus and Boeing planes today,” said Hanna. “In some respects, there’s no new technology.”

Illustrations of the aircraft nonetheless reveal a distinctive airframe, including a tall – and extremely long – unpressurised fuselage. Radia is using the philosophy of ‘minimal viable aircraft design,’ said Hanna.  

He was unable to provide a specific number of planes the company aims to build, but it will be in the dozens. The company aims to triple the acreage available for onshore wind deployment, driving down the cost by 30%.

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