Recently, at the 50 MW wind power project in Huguan County, Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, the world’s largest wind power tower crane—Zoomlion’s LW3600-240NB—successfully completed its construction debut. Atop the Taihang Mountains, the Aurora Green tower crane steadily hoisted wind turbine blades to a height of over 100 meters, providing core equipment support for the efficient advancement of the project.
The project plans to install eight 6.25 MW hybrid-tower wind turbine units in the deeply gullied Taihang Mountains. The wind farm has an average altitude of more than 1,400 meters, and the turbine positions are scattered along mountain ridges. The slope at some positions approaches 20 degrees. Conventional large-tonnage cranes have difficulty finding sufficiently flat working areas, and precisely positioning large components at a hub height of 160 meters poses significant challenges. To address the difficulties of mountainous construction, Zoomlion’s wind power tower crane enhances its adaptability to working conditions through a series of design “additions and subtractions,” effectively meeting these challenges.
In terms of equipment performance, safety and reliability, Zoomlion uses “additions” to enable the equipment to lift higher, heavier and more stably. The LW3600-240NB tower crane has a maximum lifting capacity of 240 tonnes and a maximum lifting height of 241 meters. It can easily cover the hoisting requirements of hybrid-tower wind turbine units above 10 MW, without the need to replace equipment additionally for ultra-high towers. In addition, the extended large-angle goose-neck jib design allows a nacelle weighing over 100 tonnes to be lifted smoothly throughout the process under strong winds on mountain ridges, completely eliminating the risk of jib jamming. Combined with fixed-radius lifting and precise hoisting technologies, it reduces repeated alignment time at height.
In terms of site footprint and process duration, Zoomlion uses “subtractions” to make the wind power tower crane more efficient and environmentally friendly to use, with easier installation and relocation. The LW3600-240NB requires only a 35 m × 55 m site footprint, totaling 1,925 m². The smaller footprint enables more flexible deployment in mountainous terrain and greater freedom in positioning, reducing disturbance to the Taihang landform and significantly lowering the difficulty of land acquisition coordination. The tower crane’s mast sections adopt an innovative clamping-shoe pallet structure, making assembly and disassembly efficient and labor-saving. The movable pulley eliminates the need for auxiliary lifting, so an auxiliary crane does not need to be on site throughout the process. Thanks to excellent modular design, under ideal conditions the full relocation process—disassembly, transport and reassembly—can be completed in as little as 32 hours, providing strong support for schedule acceleration in large-megawatt, ultra-high-tower wind power projects.
