Independence Towers
For our future.
Made in Germany
Independence Towers
With tower heights of up to 200m, we develop the world's tallest towers for wind turbines and radio sites.
Our patented tower geometry is based on mathematical and physical calculations and has been optimized under economic aspects.
An extremely damping vibration behaviour minimizes stress on the drive train, rotor and the tower itself. The wind-permeable geometry also reduces the wind build-up between the tower and the rotor, making the latter run smoother and further reducing fatigue loads on the drive gear compared to wind-impermeable designs. A relatively large diameter at the base of the tower allows the use of a ring foundation, which significantly reduces both installation and dismantling costs.
Depending on the location, our towers are made of local spruce glued limed timber. All components are manufactured in Germany with the greatest care and attention to the requirements of the EN 14080 product standard and are marked accordingly. Due to the segmental design of our towers, all components can be delivered to the site in standard 40" containers, thus considerably reducing transport costs compared to conventional tower variants.
FEM simulations under real load assumptions for coastal locations have confirmed the structural performance of our tower geometry and shown that forces and moments are distributed evenly throughout the structure.
The segmental principle
Whether it is a wind turbine or a transmission mast, the requirements for support structures are always site-dependent and have to be considered individually. For economic optimisation, the Independence Towers are adapted in their dimensioning and structure. This means that both the beam thickness and the number of beams can vary. Depending on the loads and the location, we use different fasteners that are state of the art and guarantee the durability of the entire structure.
The tower geometry allows to quickly and easily react to customer wishes and to find economically optimal solutions without having to change the production of the beam segments.
Radio sites
In the downloadable brochure below you can find out more about our wooden masts for radio sites.
Potential energy storage
The combination of our vibration-damping tower geometry and the use of glued laminated timber as the dominant material now allows the suspension of a mass which is connected to the generator via a coupling. In this way, excess electrical energy can be used to lift the mass. If the grid is not used to full capacity, for example on a cloudy and windless day, the potential energy that is now stored can be converted back into electrical energy by lowering it and fed into the grid. Depending on tower height and mass, up to 150 kWh can thus be stored without loss and retrieved with almost no delay. For comparison, a 3-person household in a single-family home consumes approx. 13 kWh per day.
Wind turbines are oscillating systems that can be excited by external forces or more specifically displaced from their resting position. These excitations must always be strongly damped, since periodic displacements from the rest position can, in the worst case, lead to a so-called resonance catastrophe and thus the collapse of a wind turbine. This happens when the excitation frequency(s) corresponds to a multiple of the natural frequency(s).
Installing a suspended mass inside the tower of a WTG, which is guided for safety reasons, would always lead to natural frequency shifts of the entire plant, depending on its height. The spectrum of excitation frequencies would simply become too wide to build tubular steel towers in an economically viable way.
