Project Scope

Hydro Tasmania is a renewable energy specialist engaged in hydro and wind energy projects across Tasmania. Since 2005, COVA has been involved in a joint venture with Roaring 40s, a major developer of wind farms to tackle challenging control factors such as longitudinal grades under 11% and road cross falls less than 4%.

Schedule

2011

Hydro Tasmania engaged COVA to provide civil design and documentation skills for the preliminary road and installation platform layouts for a 39 turbine wind farm in Musselroe, Tasmania and a 60 turbine farm in Waterloo, South Australia.

For easy transportation, COVA broke down each turbine into components and separated the nacelle, tower and blades. This required the use of multi-axle articulated vehicles, some with an overall road length in excess of 47 metres.

COVA calculated the access road geometry in an effort to address the limited manoeuvrability of vehicles and cranes. Major control factors included a 45 metre distance limit between curves, a 11% restriction on longitudinal grades and a 500 metre radius for vertical curves. The latter proved to be challenging as the Waterloo site was located atop a long, narrow ridge with side slope grades approaching 25%. The complex shape of the turbines also created major mobility issues.

Despite this, COVA used state-of-the-art terrain modelling and design software to complete the project and deliver a successful result.