Tower Base Cabling Package for a European Wind Farm

Client Background

A wind farm developer in Europe needed terminations and multi core breakouts for the tower base cabling of 28 turbines plus the switching station at the collector point.

Project Challenge

Work inside a tower base where access is restricted, the environment is condensing, and every termination has to be right first time because returning to a tower costs a day.

Customer Pain Points

• Condensing environment inside tower bases attacking any unsealed breakout
• Restricted access making a long termination build physically difficult
• Multi core control and power cable with crutches that had failed on a previous site
• A supplier who could deliver to a turbine erection programme not a warehouse date

Our Solution

Y1 molded breakout boots with factory applied adhesive on the big end and every leg sealed the crutches. C15 kits handled the 15 kV terminations. The compact heat shrink build fitted the available space where a longer stress cone based termination would not have.

Manufacturing Process

Breakout boots molded in our own tooling in the leg counts the cable schedule required. Kits packed to the tower base bill of materials with a separate carton per turbine.

Supply Chain Coordination

One carton per turbine labelled with the turbine number. That removed picking from the site entirely because the crew took a labelled carton to the tower and everything in it belonged there.

Quality Control

Adhesive flow verified on sample boots. Per lot testing of tensile elongation heat aging and water absorption.

Final Result

All 28 towers were completed to the erection programme. The per turbine carton approach removed a whole category of site errors and was carried over to the developer's next project.

Customer Benefit

Sealed crutches that survive a condensing tower base, and a packing method that removed site picking errors entirely.