Wind turbine manufacturing in Spain

At the end of June 2020, the Nordex Group received a major order from the Israeli energy provider Enlight Renewable Energy to install wind turbines for the 312 MW "Gecama" wind farm in the Spanish Region of Castilla-La Mancha. This wind farm, Spain's largest to date, supplies 260,000 households with clean energy and avoids emissions of 150,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. It is located near the municipality of Motilla del Palancar, around 200 kilometres south-east of the Spanish capital Madrid. A plant for the production of concrete towers for wind turbines was built there on a twelve-hectare site.

Complete production on site

This is a mobile production facility for Nordex Group concrete towers that can later be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere. The advantage: production is always located in the immediate vicinity of the wind farm, which shortens transport routes and times and reduces logistics costs. The production facility in Motilla del Palancar has a capacity of 50 segments per week, which corresponds to two towers with a height of 120 metres. The concrete required for production, around 1,200 m³ per tower, is produced and supplied by the local concrete plant of concrete manufacturer Hormigones Villaescusa.

Concrete technologists from MC involved right from the start

Due to the demanding technical specifications of the concrete, MC Spain's concrete technology department was involved in all of the preparatory work, from classification and recipe development through to the installation of the concrete. In order to meet the high requirements for the concrete - self-compacting concrete with a strength of ≥ 65 MPa was required - MC's research department developed the high performance superplasticiser MC-PowerFlow 3095 especially for this purpose. It is based on the latest MC polymer technology taking into account the materials and cements used on site, as well as the environmental conditions.