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The success story of CTE Wind Ibérica started early in 2018 and had huge positive impact on the entire CTE Wind group. With 100 projects in 3 years the Spanish office designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed foundations around 3000 wind turbines.

Bilbao, ESP / La Richardais, FRA — It was first the will to show more presence in the Spanish speaking wind energy markets that motivated Alexander MARTIN, CEO of CTE Wind International, to open an office with a «local team» in Spain. The Iberian branch was set up in initially in Basque city Bilbao by gathering a group of experienced engineers both in the wind industry and the Spanish markets, following the CTE Wind main principle of trying to be the best in class. A power move that very quickly proved to be profitable.

Understandably, the beginnings were focused on getting the company acknowledge by the most important players in Spanish and Latin American markets. After many business trips, meetings, presentations and thanks to the market knowledge of CTE Wind Ibérica team members and their reputation, in combination with the CTE Wind brand recognition, the first projects came to CTE Wind Ibérica very soon. Client’s loyalty was only possible thank to the excellent job of the engineering team to fulfill the customers’ expectations in terms of quality and optimization. That is and has be CTE Winds best publicity.

Three years later, CTE Wind is proud to announce the main figures of this short but vertiginous path: The Iberian office performed geotechnical consultancy activities, designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed foundations for 101 wind farms across 14 different countries together with 36 companies that rewarded CTE Wind Ibérica with their trust. Close to 3.000 wind turbines, from 11 different turbine manufacturers are running smoothly thanks to CTE Winds contribution in the field of foundation design for wind turbines and geotechnical services. CTE Wind wants to thank all of our current clients for their trust during this time. You can rely on us: We share your passion.

About CTE Wind International

CTE Wind Civil Engineering is an international engineering consulting firm specialized in the analysis and design of onshore wind turbine foundations. CTE Wind has been active in the wind energy sector since 2003. As of 2019, CTE Wind has designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed foundations for over 17,500 turbines in 67 countries. CTE Wind is headquartered in France and has offices in Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Spain, USA and Asia.

The company is a subsidiary of the CTE Group, a consulting firm, specialized in building and civil engineering. The CTE Group was founded in 1965 and today is one of the leaders in the structural engineering sector.

Experts in Foundation Design

From 1 to 12 MW wind turbines

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance in 2019 developers worldwide have globally
commissioned a little over 45GW of onshore wind turbines. CTE Wind designed, valueengineered
or peer-reviewed foundations close to 1,500 WTG-foundations around the globe,
which represents around 5 GW of the installed onshore wind energy in 2019. A good result
for the 30 engineers working together worldwide. CTE Wind is an international engineering
consulting firm, headquartered in France, and specialized in the analysis and design of
onshore wind turbine foundations. Its engineering services lead to inventive foundation
solutions for wind turbines. In Rotterdam, they have designed the foundation for GE’s giant
12 MW Haliade X. But they are also with familiar with smaller 1 MW machines carried by
wooden towers. «Thanks to our experienced civil, structural and geotechnical senior
engineers the design of those wind turbine foundations worldwide are only a little challenge
to us», said Alexander MARTIN, CEO of CTE Wind International, «regardless if it is for new
turbine models from the top manufacturers or less common WTG-models from smaller or
local manufacturers», he added.

Biggest wind park in France, Poland and Spain

The sum of all experiences made since 2003 is the reason why CTE Wind’s engineering
team with offices in Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Spain, USA and Asia are often the first
choice for OEMS, wind park developers and EPC/BoP contractors. «That is how we
achieved to do over 17,500 wind turbines in 67 countries and without any failures», continues
MARTIN. One of CTE Winds main goals is to deliver foundation designs that optimizes the
use of resources and help to save concrete and reinforcement steel. Such a solution is the
patented SOFT-SPOT®, a gravity foundation with a soft layer under the anchor cage. Each
project receives an adapted design solution to the specific soil conditions. In Finland CTE
Wind designed a rock anchor solution when its engineers also designed a near-shore
foundation in Asias Mekong-Delta. «The trust of our customers leads us not only to
design special and new solutions but also the foundations for the biggest wind parks in
France, Spain and Poland. We are thrilled when we can play an important role in a wind farm
project. This shows the confidence of our customers in our designs and is also an
encouragement for us to continue to perform well», he ends.

From 27 to 30 September 2022, Hamburg will become an energy hub for the world. For four days, at WindEnergy Hamburg everything at the trade show site will revolve around generating energy from wind and its exploitation.

CTE Wind partecipates in Hamburg with an own stand.

Leading business and union representatives provided diverse insights into all areas of the industry, with plenty of facts and figures. So as to cover the huge impending need for renewable energies, they highlighted the significance of personal exchange and knowledge transfer on an equal footing between industry, research institutions and policy

SCHEDULE A MEETING

Alexander MARTIN CEO of CTE Wind International, along with the country Managers, engineering team and sales representatives of de CTE Wind offices worldwide will attend at the largest renewables conference dedicated to the wind energy market in Europe and all over the world. This is an excellent opportunity for interested companies to meet our sales team, learn more about CTE Wind’s expertise in civil engineering and foundations and discuss future collaborations..

Do not hesitate to contact us to organize a meeting.
See you soon in Hamburg.

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CTE Wind Ibérica, experts in wind turbine foundation design, in Spain and Latin America, celebrates this year the 5^th anniversary of the company.

CTE Wind Ibérica’s journey began back in June 2017 in Bilbao (Basque Country) and focused its design and calculation work for the Spanish market and Spain based customers operating worldwide. Since then, many customers entrusted the Spanish experts in WTG foundation design with over 225 contracts. Foundations for 4900 WTGs (or close to 20 GW energy output) have been designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed in 181 wind farms across 22 different countries.

«CTE Wind Ibérica has experienced phenomenal growth in its few years of existence», said Alexander MARTIN, CEO of CTE Wind International. «In the advancement of this growth, we will continue to bring cost-effective foundation design, geotechnical consulting services and exceptional customer service to EPC, CBoP, Developers and OEMs.»

All major turbine manufacturers

In five years of market presence, CTE Wind Ibérica has designed foundation for ten different OEMs: Enercon, Envision, GE, Goldwind, Nordex, NRG Patagonia, Senvion, Siemens-Gamesa, Vestas and WEG. Regardless if the wind turbine had a tubular steel or concrete tower. Noteworthy are the rock anchored foundation design in Mexico or the star foundation (ribbed foundation) in the Gecama wind park project in Spain (see picture).

CTE Wind Ibérica also implemented successfully CTE Wind’s patented Soft-Spot® solution, with most of the above-mentioned manufacturers. Particularly in Spain and Latin America is the low resource foundation a big success.

Active in Wind since 2003

CTE Wind Ibérica, as part of CTE Wind International, is an international engineering consulting firm specialized in the analysis and design of onshore wind turbine foundations. CTE Wind has been active in the wind energy sector since 2003. As of 2022, CTE Wind International has designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed foundations for over 23,500 turbines in 74 countries. CTE Wind is headquartered in France and has offices in Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Spain, USA and Asia.

The company is a subsidiary of the CTE Group, a consulting firm, specialized in building and civil engineering. The CTE Group was founded in 1965 and today is one of the leaders in the structural engineering sector in France.

CTE Wind’s engineering team is working on different wind projects in Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa and Saudi-Arabia. And not for the first time ! The WTG foundation experts can look back on 15 years of project history in these regions.

La Richardais FRA – Wind projects all over Africa and Middle East are ramping up. The Global Wind Energy Council foresees wind energy capacity reaching over 3GW by the end of 2023 in South Africa, but according to the IEA, Sub-Saharan Africa alone offers a wind energy potential of 1,300 GW.

Foundation Expertise

As a matter of fact, CTE Wind has been requested to support different European and Arabian customers for their wind projects in Africa and the Middle East. Projects in South-Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt and Saudi-Arabia are currently in CTE Wind’s pipeline. The engineering office provided many times its wind turbine foundation expertise over the last 15 years in North and South Africa. As of 2021, CTE Wind designed, value-engineered or peer-reviewed foundations of 2700 wind turbines within 76 projects. The services vary from geotechnical consulting, to preliminary and detailed foundation design, as well as forensic engineering for existing wind farms, without forgetting the third-party verification (CAT3) task.

First African Project

CTE Wind has worked regularly in Morocco but also in other countries of Africa and the Middle East.

In 2008 CTE Wind had its first wind project for a project in North-Africa. The expert in foundation design for wind turbine foundations designed gravity bases for 131 Siemens machines in the Tarfaya wind park, located in Southern Morocco. Then came the Ashegoda wind farm in Ethiopia, the Kabertene wind park project in Algeria, the Balikesir wind farm in Turkey and the Nojoli wind park in South Africa

Bigger Wind Parks

In 2016 CTE Wind has been awarded the wind park in Ras Ghareb, Egypt, with 125 wind turbines.

The Ombepo wind farm in Namibia came later. In Saudi Arabia, the trouble shooting work was done successfully for the Dumat Al Jandal wind park with 99 positions. A new project in the country has just been awarded to CTE Wind.

This short list gives a quick overview as to where CTE Wind’s expertise in wind turbine foundation in Africa and the Middle East has been requested.

CTE wind is more confident than ever to work on any wind projects from South-Africa to the Middle East region. Get in touch if you need further information about foundation expertise and services.

***

About CTE Wind

About CTE Wind – Experts in Foundation Design World Wide:We serve since 2003 the wind industry as civil / structural engineers for wind park owner, developers and EPC/BoP-contractors. Often also directly for the OEMs. 25000 wind turbines in 73 countries. We provide geotechnical services, preliminary and final designs for wind turbine foundations, repowering and life time extension services.

CTE Wind R&D and Consulting services are the first choice when it comes to foundation design regardless of the WTG-manufacturer, model, size, power or soil conditions. Thanks to internal R&D-Team with senior engineers, holding over 100 years of cumulated experience in the design of wind turbine foundations, nothing is impossible.

La Richardais (FRA) – In 2019 Developers worldwide have globally commissioned a little over 45GW of onshore wind turbines. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Danish firm Vestas remained this way the world’s leading wind turbine supplier, with Spanish-German wind engineering company Siemens Gamesa a strong second. Chinas manufacturer number one Goldwind was third in the rankings, while US-Leader GE Renewable Energy’s secured its fourth place. Together the top four manufacturers accounted for 55 percent of the market share.

100 years of cumulated experience

This statement applies more or less also to CTE Wind, which calculated, designed and evaluated about 5000 WTG-foundations in 2019 around the globe. Thanks to CTE Wind’s internal R&D, with senior engineers holding over 100 years of cumulated experience in the design of wind turbine foundations worldwide, new turbine models from the top manufacturers as well as less common WTG-models from smaller or local manufacturers are only a little challenge. CTE Wind engineering services lead to state-of-the-art foundation solutions for wind turbines. Regardless of whether it is a prototype, such as GE’s giant 12 MW Haliade X or smaller 1 MW machine, from German ENO or Dutch EWT.

Wooden tower

Also worth mentioning: the different types of towers for wind turbines. Concrete (hollow foundation) and steel towers are well known to CTE Wind. Both tower systems are suitable to be used alone or in combination. Even foundations with wooden towers were calculated and designed by CTE Wind in the past. The sum of all experiences made during the projects since 2003 is the reason why their engineering services in foundation design are the first choice for wind turbine manufacturers, wind park developers and EPC contractors worldwide.

Get ready for another WindEurope event in Bilbao, Spain, with a full exhibition & high-level conference, showcasing the latest in onshore and offshore wind!

The event is a great opportunity for interested EPC/CBoP-experts to meet our dedicated engineering and sales team to learn more about CTE Wind’s civil engineering and foundation expertise and to talk about future business opportunities. Meet the foundation experts at the Booth 3-B46.

PRENDRE RENDEZ-VOUS

The event will take place in Basque city Bilbao, home of CTE Wind Ibérica ( Enrique Martínez Camarero & Pekka Maunu ) on 5-7 April 2022

Do not hesitate to contact us to organize a meeting. See you soon in Bilbao.

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Since 2019 CTE Wind provides geotechnical engineering services to their clients. Over the last six months, Ana Bielza, Senior Engineer at CTE Wind Iberica has taken part in over 45 projects. We have asked her what she actually does and why her role is crucial for the foundation design of wind turbine generators (WTG).

Can you briefly explain to us what a specialist in geotechnical engineering like you does?
Ana Bielza: Geotechnicians apply scientific methods and engineering principles to predict the response of the ground to the foundation requirements. They then deliver this information to the civil engineers so they can design foundations accordingly.

What is the difference between common geotechnical engineering for bridges or building compared to the WTG-geotechnics?
Ana Bielza: There are not many differences. The ground has to be investigated with similar methods (drillings, geophysics, lab tests, etc.) and the same kind of parameters are needed. But the ground capacity is usually not what determines the foundation size, because most of the time the soil strength transmitted by a turbine foundation is not high. Besides, settlements in general are not important in this type of structures. But rotational stiffness can rather be the main ground parameter to manage and sometimes it can even set the foundation size.

CTE Wind offers his services worldwide

You worked on over 45 projects in six months, which is quite a lot. In which countries did you take a look at the ground?
Ana Bielza: Yes, there were many. It looks like our services are very appreciated by the customers (She smiles delighted). I worked for projects in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Israel, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Spain, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkey, and Ukraine. Of course, every country has its peculiarities. And I not only mean the different ground types you can find but also how the different investigations that are conducted and how the results are delivered.

Looking back on these last months, what were the challenges? Can you maybe share one or two projects with us?
Ana Bielza: Challenging projects are usually the ones located on recent soils in seismic areas and near to the shore (high water table). For example, we have done several basic designs for a huge project in India with 1000 wind turbines, located on a saline desertic zone most of the year. But during the monsoon season the landscape becomes a swamp, with water at ground level. It is a region with an extreme seismic risks, on a recent granular soil (potentially liquefiable) and very aggressive to the concrete. We had to analyze the ground with just four boreholes in an area for 1000 turbines!

Sounds like fun. As far as we know, there are no known cases of significant damage from liquefaction in wind farms. So, how did you solve this problem?
Ana Bielza: Well, with only four drillings for such a huge area, it was mandatory to be conservative, therefore, and according to the client, we worked with two possible scenarios. We hope they were representative for the situation in most of the future turbine positions. The civil engineer then follows our specifications and designs the foundations accordingly with piles.

Trust is an important key factor

Could you tell us about another project?
Ana Bielza: Another challenging project has been the one in a country in South America, a wind farm with over 40 turbines. This was a constructive design where we had also drafted the geotechnical study from a factual report given by the customer, with 45 boreholes, 80 trial pits and 46 geophysical tests as well as an important amount of laboratory tests. The ground was good, a consolidated gravely soil -a conglomerate-, but seemed to be prone to suffer some dissolution because it had salt in its matrix.

What does it mean exactly?
Ana Bielza: The matrix describes the different layers a soil can have. The salt in the matrix can be dissolved by heavy rain or ground water. But even if the ground suffers an hypothetical dissolution, the remaining gravely soil would show enough strength and rigidity to carry the WTG. Besides, there was no water at all in the area, it was in a desert area.

Good conditions. What was the problem then?
Ana Bielza: Yes, but the client was pressuring us to set down categorically that there was no risk of dissolution, and there was no possibility at all for buoyancy. The geotechnics of the project showed good conditions for our SOFT-SPOT® foundation, but the wind farm owner seemed to have unfounded fears and wanted us to affirm that there was zero risk in this area. But zero risk does not exist. It was tricky to explain why there are no risk but we had to write about an hypothetical dissolution. Luckily, we finally came to an understanding. (ctewind)