reblading


advanced retrofits for the industry

Nabla Wind Hub has introduced the concept of reblading wind turbine which represents not just the possibility to purchase unavailable spare components, often out of production when it comes to old turbine models, but the opportunity to increase the electrical output of the assets, reduce the OPEX, adopt a true Life Extension enabler.

The wind landscape is moving towards a different phase and standard wind blades might no longer fit all purposes:

  • High yield sites availability saturating.
  • Incentives schemes becoming less remunerating or competitive.
  • Governments pushing for grid parity and innovation to bring wind energy to competition.
  • Wind industry consolidating – massive waves of acquisitions have overpassed the initial under-capitalization fragmentation of the industry: new, more professional players, are emerging and will dominate the industry.
  • Assets in operations deteriorating while at the same time their overall value is decreasing over time.

Our vision is to be able to achieve:

  • More from less windy sites while maintaining high efficiency under conditions of strong wind.
  • Significantly improving of the output from old wind-farms providing longer life-cyle.
  • Loads reduction on blade, gearbox and tower under any wind condition through the adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques and design methods embedding self adjusting bend-twist and passive deforming.
  • The ability to seamlessly support our clients from start to end, from designing a new blade suitable for their original equipment and site conditions, through to authorization procedures and investment decisions.

In other words: a remarkable cost reduction ratio (€/kW) for wind turbines, and improved wind farm returns.

Manufacturing

With a track record of over 2,000 blades produced starting 2012 for international customers and markets, Nabla Wind Hub, through its Design, Manufacturing, Moulding & Tooling, Blade Service and Testing & Certification departments, supports customers to extract the maximum value from their wind farms, partnering with them from new wind development opportunities up to large scale Reblading programmes.

Different competences, coming from our top management entrepreneurial experiences in wind, marine and aerospace, and multi-skilled teams, lead together with our partners, are joined to craft new blade profiles, adopting advanced materials and innovative technologies driving the efforts towards the next wind farm generation needs: enhancing the value of assets (vs lower or no incentives) while improving wind farm efficiency (vs market saturation) at a lower environmental impact (vs. deteriorated social acceptance).

Our manufacturing abilities come from advanced marine aerospace state-of-the-art techniques, with particular regard to the infusion process and the mix of advanced materials we are able to use when designing and actually producing a new blade or tip.

eTa Blades (part of Nabla Wind Hub) has established the production facility in Fano, on the eastern cost of Italy next to the Adriatic sea, within the most important Italian naval district. This further enables our competitiveness in terms of cost, access to key suppliers, to all logistics and highly skilled resources.

With its covered 5,500 sqm and 3,000 external warehouse, Nabla Wind Hub can manage high volumes of blade manufacturing.

The facility is equipped with attractive features among which:

  • 5 axes machine centre for quality epoxy monolithic modular 20mm post-cured 80C° mouldings for blades up to 45m.
  • Paint cabin for all relevant finishing procedures specific finishing cycles while respecting all HSE requirements.
  • Kuka fot T-Bolts, root machining up to 3m diameter.