Enercon is developing additional and taller hybrid steel towers (HST) for its EP5 turbine.
With the additional steel tower variants, the tower portfolio will be expanded to cover so Enercon can offer towers with high hub heights worldwide and deliver them as early as 2026.
Until now, Enercon customers planning EP5 turbines with high hub heights have only been able to choose hybrid towers with a combination of concrete and steel segments.
“In order to be able to deliver for our customers in the coming years and to prevent the onshore expansion, which has finally gained momentum, from stalling again due to limited capacities, we are expanding the tower portfolio for the EP5 with an additional technology,” said Maria-Josefa Brand, Tower Product Manager at Enercon Product Management.
The HST tower combines segments of the modular steel tower (MST) consisting of folded steel plates bolted together for the tower base with segments of a tubular steel tower (ST), which are placed on the lower MST segments.
The HST technology has already proven itself in practice and is also available for new tower variants with high hub heights at short notice.
The components are easy to transport and use simple installation concepts, and production can be localised without major effort – for example in countries with local content requirements.
Timo Muller, EP5 Platform Manager at Enercon Product Management, said: “Due to the transport restrictions for HT towers, high hub heights were previously reserved for our customers in Germany.”
As a first step, Enercon is offering the new tower variants ‘HST 162m’ for the E-175 EP5 E1/E2, ‘HST 175m’ for the E-175 EP5 E2 and ‘HST 166m’ for the E-160 EP5 E3.