Moving wind turbine parts is not an easy task there is a lot more to it than people would think. Randy McQueen is vice president of business development for TMO Global Logistics an international firm that arranges transportation for wind farm developers.

If you have traveled through Charleston WV lately, you may have seen some of his windmills. TMO has been working on transporting wind-turbine parts to the Pinnacle Wind Farm project near Keyser. With pieces as heavy as 139,000 pounds or nearly 80 feet long, transportation can be a logistical nightmare.

The 23 windmill towers are each shipped in four sections. The base is the shortest, but also the heaviest, weighing about 139,000 pounds and measuring 42 feet long and 14.1 feet in diameter. The top sections are lighter but longer. They weigh 93,000 pounds and are 78.9 feet long and 12.2 feet in diameter.

The pieces are manufactured in Mexico and shipped by truck to the Port of Galveston in Texas. From there, they’re loaded onto barges and shipped across the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River and then onto the Kanawha River before coming to a stop at a dock in St. Albans.

“Just for this dock we had to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers involved and permits from those guys, permits from CSX, permits from Division of Highways and Department of Transportation,” McQueen said.

Five barges were used to ship all of the parts, as well as 15 of the turbines needed for the project. To offload all of that, TMO is leasing an eight-acre tract of land from Peerless Block and Brick in St. Albans. Cranes to offload the heavy equipment were leased from All Crane and Equipment Rental, also in St. Albans.

Once the equipment is safely offloaded in the yard, the tedious process of trucking it to the site on Green Mountain is the next step. That began on June 20.

Read More: Charleston Daily Mail

Photo Credit: ponsdale