Tecnología ELISA: torre eólica offshore de hormigón, autoflotante y telescópica

Esteyco is a civil engineering consulting firm with 47 years of history and 20 years of experience in the wind industry. More specifically,it is a pioneering and leading company in the field of precast concrete wind towers. As such, 7 years ago we decided to enter the offshore windmarket in order to search, through R & D, new improved formulas and products to maintain our knowledge and technological leadership inthe wind sector.And that is how the ELISA technology commenced. This technology has been developed for many years with funds of different researchprogrammes, for instance, the European programme Horizon 2020 (H2020 SME Instrument “ELISA” and H2020 LC3 “ELICAN” projects). Thetechnology, for offshore wind towers, consists of a self-floating gravity base (Gravity Base System – GBS) and a self-lifting telescopic tower, bothmade of concrete. The self-floating nature of the whole structure and the tower’s telescopic configuration make it possible to assemble each unitonshore, including the turbine, to be towed by conventional means to its final position. Then, it is ballasted on the seabed and it is lifted to itsoperating height by means of conventional out-of-the-shelf heavy-lift strand jacks.Specifically, the ELICAN project consists of building a full-scale tower prototype using the ELISA technology. Its construction and therequired tests are being performed on the island of Gran Canaria.