A new wooden wind turbine has started contributing to the Swedish power grid, and the start-up responsible says that the design has great potential to shake up the wind power sector.
The turbine, which is located just outside Gothenburg, stands at 150m (492ft) from the ground to the tip of the highest blade in a vertical position.
This is the same height as the tallest wind turbine in England, which was built in Bristol in 2023.
According to Modvion, the Swedish company behind the Gothenburg turbine, wooden construction has a number of advantages over steel, which is the main material used in most wind power turbines.
Taller turbines also require increasingly huge cylindrical towers to support them.
The components must be made in specialist manufacturing facilities and transported to the site where they will be put together and the turbine unit erected.
This can prove challenging, with huge pieces of steel having to be navigated through tunnels and across roundabouts and other tricky elements of the public road system.
This essentially limits the size of steel-based towers that can practically be built and erected in many areas.
Modular construction allows wooden turbines to reach less accessible locations
Modvion’s wooden towers can be made in much smaller modular sections, allowing large towers to be built in harder-to-reach locations.
The new Gothenburg tower looks much the same as a steel turbine from the outside, with a similar white coating to protect the structure from the elements.
The blades are also of a similar construction, made primarily from fibreglass.
They connect to a 2-megawatt generator on top that is able to provide power for around 400 homes.
The walls of the tower are constructed with 144 individual layers of laminated veneer lumber (LVL).
The grain on each 3mm-thick layer can be varied to control both the strength and flexibility.
The layers are compressed and fixed with glue to create modular curved sections that can be taken from the factory to the erection site and assembled into the massive cylinders of the finished structure.
The wood used is spruce, a variety typically used for Christmas trees, and Modvion says that all its trees are sustainably sourced.
Modvion adds that using wooden towers could potentially get rid of wind turbines’ carbon footprint entirely, making them carbon-negative.
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