The grass was not so lucky: several green medians along the route were turned into roadway so that the trucks did not run over curbs while making wide turns.
The cost and hassle of transporting the huge, heavy turbines has sparked interest in manufacturing turbines in the US rather than in Europe. Last year 24 states opened, expanded or announced turbine manufacturing plants, according to the American Wind Energy Association. By value, about half of all turbine parts are now manufactured in the US, Dunlop said.
Even if more turbine parts are made in the US, experts say that transportation logistics are starting to limit how large — and as a result how powerful — wind turbines can get. Some blades are already more than 50m long, and those are “reaching the limits of what you can ship on the Interstate or on rail cars,” said Peter Stricker, vice president of strategic project development at Clipper Windpower, a wind developer and manufacturer.
There is talk of breaking a blade up into multiple pieces, but “that’s a very significant structural concern,” said Stricker, who also noted that tower bases were getting too large to squeeze through interstate underpasses.
In Texas, the state with by far the most wind turbines, the constant truck traffic has created another challenge: It is tearing up small roads in the western part of the state, where the turbines are being rapidly erected.
“You get what we call alligator cracking,” said Stacey Young, a pavement engineer for the Lubbock district of the Texas Department of Transportation, referring to small seams in the pavement.
One paved road in her area is “basically a gravel road now” because of the trucks going through, Young said. She has appealed to state lawmakers to require the developers to help pay for the upkeep of the roads, but so far to no avail.
A partial solution for Young’s concerns may be at hand. The vast majority of turbine parts travel by truck, but in Texas and elsewhere, some wind companies are looking to move more turbine parts by train to save money.
General Electric, a big turbine maker, says rail transport can be up to 50 percent cheaper over long distances, and the rail company Union Pacific saw its wind-related shipments more than double last year.
But even the train routes must avoid low overpasses when big pieces of wind turbines are aboard.
“It’s not your typical rail-car shipments,” said Tom Lange, a Union Pacific spokesman.
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