Vol.:(0123456789) International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing-Green Technology https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-019-00102-8 1 3 REGULAR PAPER Design of a telescopic tower for wind energy production with reduced environmental impact Antonio Pantano 1  · Tullio Tucciarelli 1  · Nicola Montinaro 1  · Antonio Mancino 1 Received: 5 April 2018 / Revised: 12 March 2019 / Accepted: 19 March 2019 © Korean Society for Precision Engineering 2019 Abstract A prototype of a telescopic pole for wind energy production with low environmental impact and its lifting system for a 60–250 kW turbine and a height of 30 m have been designed and manufactured. A telescopic tower, which is raised and lowered by automation or by remote control, allows to diferentiate the presence of the generator within the landscape over time. The technology currently available for lifting and lowering wind turbines is made up of telescopic poles of heights of less than 10 meters and with tilting posts of height below 30 m. Without a state of the art to refer to, the telescopic pole and its lifting system have been designed starting from scratch and solving with innovative ideas the various criticalities that have arisen. The design of the telescopic coupling, the design for maintaining the preload and for the rotational decoupling, the optimization the design of the pairs of sleeves by numerical simulations, the design of the pegs and the bushes of the jack-up lifting system have been presented. The prototype was installed in Caltanissetta, Italy, and successfully tested. Keywords Telescopic tower · Wind turbine tower · Mechanical design · Finite element method Abbreviations Reds Renewable energy devices a Blades length b Blades width h Tower height FEM Finite element method 1 Introduction The main drawback of wind farms is their signifcant envi- ronmental impact, mainly in terms of landscape alteration, as well as possible risks to birds and noise in the closer areas. The discomfort generated by wind farms is aggravated by the persistence of the facilities even during periods of time when the demand for electricity is absent or the beneft from the production is less than the social cost of the environmental factors mentioned above. An example is provided by the renewable energy devices (RED) often requested in smaller islands, such as the Mediterranean ones, with a large sea- sonal tourist population, in these locations the electricity consumption is higher during the summer months and absent in the winter season or even during the periods of storm. Another example is the production of energy from REDs overnight, when photovoltaic or other solar sources are not available and demand for energy, although lower than the daytime, can be fairly strong due to many social and indus- trial activities. There are several studies on the optimization of the hybrid renewable energy power system for remote installations such as mountains and islands, one of which is provided by Bhandari et al. [1] whose results indicate that an optimized hybrid system can help remote locations to completely switch from the current fossil fuel system to an energy system based on renewable energy. An important line of research and industrial development is therefore the creation and production of wind power plants that have a lower environmental impact with the develop- ment of a tower which can be lifted and lowered easily and with considerable frequency. A structure of this type has substantial advantages both from a technical point of view and in terms of environmental impact and can be easily used in diferent ways: Online ISSN 2198-0810 Print ISSN 2288-6206 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-019-00102-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Antonio Pantano antonio.pantano@unipa.it 1 Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo, Italy