Spanish engineering outfit Nabrawind Technologies has been awarded nearly €2m from the EU Horizon 2020 initiative to support commercialisation of its self-erecting tower for wind turbines.
The Horizon 2020 SME Instrument programme will provide €1.7m financing to Pamplona-based Nabrawind, after the company successfully defended its technology in July in Brussels before an international tribunal specialised in investment.
The jury, representing the European Commission, assessed the potential of XXL wind towers and modular blades, as a response to the logistical barriers that potentially threaten the growth of the wind sector.
Nabrawind will use the capital to establish commercial opportunities for its Nabralift self-erecting tower, which can exceed 200 metres in height, and the Nabrajoint modular blade joint, which simplifies the transport of blades of more than 70m in length.
In 2018, the company installed a 160-metre high self-erecting tower prototype in Eslava, in Navarra, making it the tallest wind tower in Spain, and completed full-scale tests of its modular blade joint.
In 2020 the company will install the tallest tower in Africa with a height of 144 metres.
Nabrawind general manager Eneko Sanz said: “The European Commission joins those who believe that the future of wind energy passes through the transition to high-powered wind turbines, and the implementation of modular blades to overcome the logistical challenges that the sector is facing.”
Sanz added that Nabrawind’s products “will contribute to eliminate the logistical restrictions of onshore wind energy, so that in the near future onshore wind turbines will have the same dimensions and power as offshore turbines, which currently are up to four times more powerful.”
He also thanked the Horizon 2020 programme and consultancy Bantec Group, “which has advised and helped us throughout the process.”