Keystone says its fully-automated rolling and welding system produces towers 3x faster than traditional tower factories.
Keystone Tower Systems has completed the manufacture and installation of the industry’s first tapered spiral welded wind turbine tower in Middleton, MA.
The tower was made using Keystone’s novel manufacturing process which produces tapered, tubular steel towers with variable wall thickness – the standard design for the wind industry. This fully-automated rolling and welding system produces towers 3 times faster using 90% less labor than traditional tower factories, resulting in significant cost savings.
In addition to revolutionizing in-factory tower production, Keystone recently won funding from the US Department of Energy to develop a mobile operation for tower fabrication. This will enable production of towers at the wind farm that are too large to transport, allowing turbines to cost effectively reach hub-heights of 140m and beyond. Keystone’s mobile fabrication equipment allows them to bypass transportation and logistics barriers, a key to expanding wind into new regions. In a recent study, the US DOE estimated that enabling cost-effective deployment of wind turbines with hub heights up to 140 meters will nearly triple the amount of developable land area in the US.[1]
Keystone Tower Systems
keystonetowersystems.com
[1] http://energy.gov/eere/articles/mapping-frontier-new-wind-power-potential
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