Mérida, Yucatán — It was far from an ordinary delivery.
Getting all the various parts and pieces of 28 giant wind turbines from China to tiny Dzilam de Bravo is an enormous task.
A team of 50 transportation workers and police cooperated to move those parts, starting with a 55-meter-long propeller that ran into one obstacle: a tree on the side of the road.
Getting the propeller from the ship yard and onto trucks went smoothly. But a truck was stalled for about a half hour when they stopped to avoid a tree’s branches that threatened to scrape a propeller blade.
The solution was decidedly low-tech. After some discussion, an employee of the logistics company hired to oversee the delivery climbed two trees and hacked the offending branches with a machete.
The truck then continued on its way toward the coastal village that will be home to Yucatán’s first wind farm.
The propeller is part of the first of the four wind towers that arrived at Progreso’s port last weekend after a 31-day-long voyage from Shanghai, China. Three more shipments, carrying a total of 280 component parts, will eventually pull into port.
Each turbine will consist of five tubular sections, a rotor and three blades inserted into the hub. The blades will reach 180 meters into the sky.
All the parts should be at the farm site within 110 days, and are due to be operational by the second quarter of 2018.
The wind farm will supply “clean energy” to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), delivering it directly to a plant in Valladolid.
With information from Desde el Balcón, Diario de Yucatán
