Last year, Vattenfall invited four design firms to the Dutch Design Week’s What if Lab to explore the options for a second life for materials from wind turbines that are no longer in use. One idea, from architecture firm cepezed, to use rotor blades as floating structures to create islands, was put to the test in the Flevokust harbor in Lelystad last Wednesday.
Due to their length, strength, hollow shape, and light weight, the rotor blades seemed particularly suitable for this purpose. cepezed calculated that if multiple blades were combined, they could form an island strong enough to support housing, farmland, or solar parks—creating new space in an area where land is scarce.
cepezed explicitly focused on finding a new function for the rotor blades as a whole, so that the unique properties of a rotor blade could be reused, with as little material wasted as possible. This resulted in the proposal to reuse the rotor blades as floating structures.
One-on-one Experimentation
After a period of sketching and calculations, it was time to test the idea and sea whether the concept is feasible. Two 33-metre-long blades from an old V66 Vestas turbine were used. They were first waterproofed and then attached together with a mould. The test was completed successfully: the blades floated stably in the water.
“We need to experiment one-on-one to further develop this concept,” says Jasper Manders, architect at cepezed. “Only in this way can we get a ‘proof of concept’ and understand how the blades behave in water. In this first experiment, we examined whether they actually float and what the best way is to connect multiple blades to form an island.
Out-of-the-box thinking
Vattenfall had already been recycling parts of turbines. However, given the large number of discarded rotor blades, the energy company considers the experiment crucial. Thomas Hjort, director of innovation offshore wind, said: “It’s a fine example of out-of-the-box thinking. With this first test, we demonstrate that this concept offers possibilities we hadn’t considered before. And all of this in Flevoland, where there was once only water.”
A presentation of cepezed’s vision and the results of the floating rotor blade trial can be seen at Dutch Design Week, which takes place in Eindhoven from 19 to 27 October. Source: Vattenfall / cepezed Header and bottom image: © Vattenfall/Jorrit Lousberg
