| OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program |
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| Web Brief (Aug 07) |
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Trucks haul windmills to wind farms via Oregon roads.
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ODOT helps pave the way to renewable energy future
The freight haulers hail from Portland, Ore., Brownsville, Texas, and nine other states in the west. The cargo is made by companies headquartered in Denmark, Germany and New Jersey and arrives by ship at ports in western Washington. It traverses the width of Oregon, destined for wind farms in the eastern regions of both states.
From May through November of this year, approximately 2,400 loads of wind turbine components are traveling east on Interstate 84 headed for wind farms, where they will begin generating emission-free electricity. Gov. Kulongoski’s recent Renewable Energy Standard intends to expand our state’s sources of homegrown, clean energy; the governor’s goal is to meet 25 percent of Oregon’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2025.
ODOT’s OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program and Motor Carrier Transportation Division are doing their part in a statewide effort to facilitate Oregon’s energy independence by supporting the transport of cargo such as wind turbines throughout the Northwest.
Traffic engineers from the bridge program and ODOT MCTD, regional and Technical Services staff visited the Port of Longview, Wash., in June to watch Turner Brothers Trucking of Texas load the three components—blades, nacelles (generators) and towers—that make up a wind turbine. They were joined by representatives of Siemens, a wind turbine manufacturer.
During the past five years, the average size and weight of already large turbine components has increased by a whopping 40 percent. And because the specifications for the components differ based on the requirements of each wind farm owner, ODOT can face very different challenges each year in accommodating the overdimensional cargo on highways and bridges.
“Due to the extraordinary number of loads, no local transporter has enough specialized equipment to handle it all,” said Gregg dal Ponte, MCTD administrator. “This means we’ll need to reverse-engineer our work zone designs to handle a wide array of different transport types.”
Last year the challenge was to make sure the bridges could support extraordinary weight: The nacelles alone came in at 250,000 pounds. In most cases, the weight could be distributed so the total cargo fell within the guidelines, or load rating tables, that ODOT uses to calculate how much freight a bridge can bear. When a load did exceed the weight tables, ODOT’s bridge engineering unit calculated how to redistribute the load and communicated their findings to permit analysts in MCTD, who then issued special permits.
“The support from ODOT in 2006 was flawless,” said Duane Downs, vice president and general manager of Wilhelm Trucking & Rigging Co. of Portland, who participated in an earlier site visit to the Port of Vancouver. “It was one of the most smoothly run projects of the year for Vestas, whose wind turbines we transported. At one point, we even ran two weeks ahead of schedule thanks to ODOT’s support.”
Next year’s loads will be not only extra-heavy but extra-wide. In a construction work zone, the combined space on either side of a vehicle plus the width of the vehicle itself—what truckers call “the hole in the air”—is particularly important to freight haulers driving oversize vehicles, or those wider than 12 feet. With less clearance, drivers must decrease their speed, slowing all traffic moving through a constriction. The June meeting in Longview was a chance for ODOT’s engineers to see how wide a lane they will need to provide once construction begins on the eight bridge program bundles on I-84 scheduled for work, since they anticipate that next year’s cargo will be between 18 and 19 feet wide.
Collaboration with the trucking industry has greatly aided ODOT’s work. Software already exists to help operators of fire engines and aircraft determine their turning radiuses. Because of the varying placement of axles on the transport trucks, a customized truck-turning template must be developed to predict how the long, wide vehicles will move through curving highways and constricted bridge work zones. The trucking companies volunteered a driver and a truck to help the agency develop a survey system that will supply data to create a customized truck-turning template.
“I appreciate ODOT’s efforts to accommodate the high volume of large and heavy loads,” said Bob Russell, president of Oregon Trucking Associations and member of ODOT’s Traffic Mobility Steering Committee. “This is especially helpful in light of the amount of construction scheduled for I-84.”
According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind will provide at least 6 percent of all U.S. power by 2020, enough to power 25 million homes. With the safe movement of turbine components, many homes in Washington and Oregon are likely to be among them.
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