KoalaLifter is a disruptive self-climbing system that uses the strength of the wind turbine tower as support to climb up the turbine. KoalaLifter key invention is the way it embraces the tower with expandable collars. This makes KoalaLifter suitable for any wind turbine model of any height. It is able to perform major correctives or even the turbine erection without any need of high tonnage cranes.
source-image: KoalaLifter
One of the most important advantages of KoalaLifter is the high adaptability of the collars. They are able to copy the shape and diameter of the wind turbine tower thanks to their adaptable friction collars. KoalaLifter is able to climb up the tower using the strength of the tower with winds up to 25m/second reducing the wind turbine downtime. This provides reliability, robustness and safety during the operation.
source-image: KoalaLifter
The climbing process starts tightening the expandable collars of the first section, then the second section, with its expandable collars open, expands towards the nacelle. When this second section reaches its end stroke, its expandable collars gets tightened.
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At this point, the collars of the first section are opened and the first section gets pulled by the second section. This process is repeated until the equipment reaches the tower tip in order to reach the component that needs to be exchanged.The whole equipment fits and it is transported in a 40’ standard skeleton trailer.
This concept makes it easy to carry KoalaLifter around the world to countries where heavy cranes are not available or very expensive.It is controlled by a radio frequency remote control.
All the work regarding the staff/workers is done on ground level.Koalalifter lifts blades up to 20 tons, nacelle components up to 30 tons and turbine erection up to 150 tonsComponent exchange takes 5-6 hours, turbine erection takes 17 hour and the wind turbine shutdown is shorter than with current methods.
