Site report: Ten new turbines at Burton Wold Wind Farm

Leading independent British wind energy company Your Energy is currently developing a wind farm at Burton Wold, near Burton Latimer in Northamptonshire. The main contractor for the site is Enercon, Germany’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines.

Enercon contracted J Breheny Contractors Ltd to carry out the civil engineering works including the construction of the bases for each of the ten new wind turbines. Once the excavation for each of the bases was complete, Breheny pumped in a blinding mix to provide a level base on which to set the column base ring. Cable ducts were then installed, the column base ring was lifted into position and tied into the structure with steel reinforcement and finally, the shuttering was built around the structure. Once this work was finished, Breheny called in a 32-metre concrete boom pump from Camfaud to pump the approximately 280 cubic metres of concrete required to complete the base. Cemex ran concrete from two local plants to ensure that while Breheny got continuity of supply, other customers were not neglected.

After the column base rings were concreted into position, the 65-metre high column turbine towers complete with 35-metre blades were erected. Given these dimensions, i.e. a structure 100 metres high and designed to catch the wind, it is easy to see why Breheny took great trouble to set the base rings so accurately. This included asking each concrete pump operator to move the end placing hose round and round the base to ensure an even build-up of concrete and no cold joints.

The 20MW Burton Wold Wind Farm is expected to be producing electricity by the middle of 2006 and will generate more than 46 million units of electricity annually. The developers claim that they will be able to supply 10,000 local homes with safe, clean, green electricity. They say that the project will also save around 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year. The fear of noise pollution caused by wind farms has been addressed by using the Enercon E70, state of the art direct drive turbine. As this design has no gearbox it is claimed to be very quiet, even quieter than the turbines used to provide the noise model for the planning application.

• Pump: M32

• Customer: J Breheny Contractors Ltd

• Site: Burton Wold Wind Farm, Northants

• Concrete Supplier: Cemex

• Date: Autumn 2005