The Crowlands project was part of a portfolio of three projects awarded by Senvion to Ares for delivery commencing in 2018 – the other two being Murra Warra Stage 1 and Lincoln Gap Stage 1.

Both Crowlands and Murra Warra were delivered out of the Port of Portland and so had to share port storage space – not a straightforward task with 100 wind turbines’ worth of components to manage!  Components had to be segregated by type and project, with some stored berthside and the remainder sent to the nearby storage area in Portland.

The terrain at Crowlands was especially tricky for transport, with winding and undulating hills to negotiate and road gradients of up to 20%.  To assist some of the larger loads up these hills, Ares had brought our heavy duty ‘BIGFOOT’ tow truck, but in some cases even this was not enough.  For the steepest sections, a Moxy dump truck was brought in, forming a three-truck tow train that was able to navigate up to the top. 

From the Port of Portland, wind turbine components travelled north-east towards Hamilton, bypassing the town and skirting around the southern border of the Grampians. Past Dunkeld, the trucks turned onto the Pyrenees Highway, with a short run to the wind farm site once past Ararat.

Amongst the many challenging oversized components requiring delivery to Crowlands, one stood out as particularly challenging – the 36m-long mid tower sections. When mounted to the bookend trailers, the overall length of the truck and trailer combination was 57m – even longer than the blade trailers! Special care had to be taken when navigating around the large towns of Hamilton and Ararat to ensure no damage to the cargo or road infrastructure.