Now that wind turbines can measure approximately the length of four buses, there is greater pressure on transport infrastructure to accommodate the larger models and deliver them safely and efficiently.

Given that onshore wind farms are generally positioned in remote and hilly areas, the transport infrastructure that is available as a starting point is usually less than ideal. To help reduce transport costs, firms have undertaken technological advancements in delivery technology.

Nooteboom and Scheuerle, both eminent firms in trailer production, have built transport systems to reduce the need for expensive land deals and physical road works to transport longer loads. Nooteboom’s innovative Super Wing Carrier provides a stable delivery platform that can alter load configuration, while also allowing significant height increases to lift loads over obstacles as well as boasting an increased steering angle.

Scheuerle have used Pythagoras to effectively shorten blades, by raising the blade tips into the air to circa 60 degrees, thus effectively reducing the length of blades to allow them to get around constraints. Solutions such as these reduce the need for intrusive road works, resulting in reduced mitigation costs and project timescales.

As turbines get larger, the demands on the transport industry and engineering sectors will only increase. To help reduce costs and project run times further, the renewable industry needs to work together to lobby government to introduce a new strategy for abnormal loads in the UK.

This needs to be wide ranging and include a review of matters such as the better provision of trained Police personnel to escort abnormal loads, a review of the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (the UK’s trunk road design guide) allowing flexibility in designing for large loads, and identifying transport corridors where investment in long term multi-project road improvements can be deployed.

The UK’s ports and marine facilities need modernisation in order to keep up with wind farm development. The “water preferred” strategy adopted by the Department for Transport is long overdue an update to facilitate longer and wider loads, not just heavy loads.  There are only a handful of UK ports where 55m blades are deliverable without the need for access improvement – but few can currently accommodate the 70m+ long onshore blades that are now starting to enter the market.

A review of the UK’s ports and marine facilities also needs to consider the needs of the offshore wind sector. Strategic port investment that creates suitable areas to help build schemes such as Neart na Gaoithe, Moray East, Beatrice and their successors, will need facilities and vessels to ensure construction can proceed efficiently, safely and on time.

Careful planning for new advances in offshore turbine design will be necessary in determining the parameters for investment at the ports. In order to keep the wind industry moving in the right direction, while not necessarily a transport matter, the UK must also focus on what it can do to promote a home-grown operation and maintenance industry to provide industry support for the life time of an investment, rather than just focusing on headline-catching manufacturing elements.

When the withdrawal of subsidies was announced in 2015, many thought the wind farm industry was over. But the offshore market is now able to produce cost effective power competitive with the market, and serious players in the onshore industry are now looking at producing higher tip height, wide diameter rotor machines in excess of four megawatt output.

There is also a belief that wind power development will only happen in Scotland and on the fringes of Wales from now on. But repowering onshore sites across the UK in the next ten years will become more cost effective and attractive because access to the grid can be reused and concerns of the impact on amenity will have already been tested by older sites.

While there is land available to be built on, the key issues that could hold back projects will be gaining planning permission and the ability to get larger machines to site.  To make sure we take advantage of these new investment opportunities and possibilities to generate innovation, transport infrastructure must therefore be a key issue to consider in the future.