Have you noticed an oversized object being transported on a flatbed truck, along Whiteside County roads or U. S. Highway 30 this summer? That was one of 74 Nacelles Turbines being delivered through Whiteside County to the Green River Wind Farm. The new installation is between Deer Grove, and Ohio, IL.
The Nacelles Turbines were built by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A., a Spanish-based engineering company located in Zamudio, Biscay, Spain. Siemens/Gamesa manufactures wind turbines and provides onshore and offshore wind services. Each Nacelles Turbine is 15′ wide, 26′ long, and 15′ high and weighs 245,000 pounds.
The nacelle you may have seen is a cover housing. It contains all of the generating components in a wind turbine: generator, gearbox, drive train, rotor shaft, and brake assembly.
Arduous heavy hauling is the work of Contractors Cargo Co., based in Houston, TX. The business hauls “big stuff,” stated David Soriano, Operations Manager for the Illinois project. He is General Manager at the Contractors Cargo Co. in Compton, CA, 110 ten miles north of San Diego. He has been employed over 30 years.
He did not exaggerate. They handle weight loads from 100,000 to 1,000,000 pounds! The latter weight would describe “generators, transformers, and turbines that are transported to nuclear plants.” Soriano noted CCC was one of the first companies to haul the Space Shuttle Challenger, from Edwards Air Force Base, CA, to NASA in Houston when it was retired. CCC hauled the shuttle seven times, he added.
During the last week of June 2019 transport began from the Fulton, IL, barge landing. As of Saturday, July 13, there “are 59 turbines left to deliver.” He expects to complete delivery “the second or third week of August. We deliver ten turbines a week, running Monday through Saturday, [but] travel up to noon on Saturday. We restart at daylight on Monday. Trucks go a half hour apart.”
On Friday, July 12, both construction and deconstruction took place in order to safely allow trucks to pass. That morning, Soriano was “shoring up a culvert on IL Route 2/U. S. Route 30, one-eighth of a mile from the left turn from Route 30 toward Rock River.” Earlier, Contractors Cargo Co. had hired Gene Ryan, owner of Ryan’s Tree Service, Inc., 23454 Emerson Road, Sterling, IL. For three hours Ryan deconstructed overhanging limbs from a dozen trees, to prevent them touching or snagging the equipment. Trees did not suffer from his subtle trimming. They do not look deformed, as trees do when linemen “trim” out a gigantic gouge around power lines. Overgrown, low hanging branches block sidewalks and create dangerous blind spots for local citizens.
Soriano described the start-to-finish international journey of Nacelles Turbines to Green River Wind Farm. From Spain they are shipped by “big ships” to New Orleans, LA, and travel up the Mississippi River on barges to Fulton. “Each barge carries four turbines [980,000 pounds], four hubs [1,600,000 pounds], and spinners to cover the hubs.” A 200-ton wind turbine rotor hub, shown at right in the photograph, will be installed at the forward end of each nacelle. Nineteen barges were necessary. In Fulton, equipment was unloaded, transferred onto trucks, and–in time–driven to the wind farm.
Each State determines routes for carriers and notifies Districts, who notify Counties, Soriano said. “In January 2019, [this project] began to get coordinated. We have to use all State Highways.” The fee Whiteside County Highway Department wanted to insure passage was cost prohibitive, so trucks are using U. S. Route 30– from Morrison to IL Highway 26.
His crew runs the route in advance, “to facilitate the State requirement to be at or under the 400,000 weight limit per vehicle. Three of the nine Pilot Cars are used per load, to keep the public safe while we are moving.” Included are lead bucket trucks used to push up wires.
- Trucks leave the Fulton barge landing; drive IL 84 south to Garden Plain Road; follow it east to Morrison.
- Route 30 leads them east through Rock Falls to IL Highway 26.
- Trucks go south on Highway 26 to Maytown Road in East Grove County.
- They follow Maytown Road west to Green River Conservation Area, and “cranes unload the items, moving from pad-to-pad.”
Photos were taken by David Soriano at the Green River Conservation Area. The turbine and ancillary equipment arrive on dry and muddy days.
Cranes are essential to unloading equipment. Note “tiny” men beside the flatbed truck in the third photo and the grey, turbine rotor hub, beside the pole at lower right in the fourth.
“The State of Illinois Engineering Department has been so good to work with, so open. Law Enforcement has been very open. They have been nothing but helpful to get us from point A to point B,” David Soriano stated. “Illinois has been one of the best states to work with!”
If you see a “very qualified, very specialized Contractors Cargo Co. driver,” give a friendly wave to a man who soon will return home, after three months in The Land of Lincoln. As for General Manager Soriano, he goes from job-to-job and is absent from California six months of the year. Safe travels, all.