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Old 06-01-2016, 09:02 PM   #4 (permalink)
darcane
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I believe a lot of the reason for how towers are traditionally constructed revolve around the fact that wind farms tend to be in remote places. If you develop parts that can be transported to the site easily and quickly assembled it is cheaper and easier to build. You have a factory churning out parts and on-site is simply assembly.

Cranes are very expensive to have on site. Building all those forms on site and using the crane to lift them in place is probably very expensive comparatively. Because of the remote location, trucking in all that concrete can get very expensive even if the concrete itself is cheap. So, steel ends up being cheaper than concrete.

Concrete production generates a lot of CO2. For an industry that is very concerned about the image of being green, this is a bad thing. Personally, I don't see CO2 as a pollutant, so I think it is much ado about nothing, but it is generally a concern in the industry.

Some manufacturers are starting to build the bottom section out of concrete (~100ft) and the top sections out of steel to get the best of both worlds.
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