Wind turbine nacelle raised on ARES Group’s 250T hydraulic jacking system at Civmec, Henderson WA. Courtesy of ARES Group.
Squadron Energy required a blade transport solution for the Uungula Wind Farm, northeast of Wellington, NSW, capable of handling current blade lengths while scaling to accommodate future turbine generations. Fixed-length blade trailers are typically rendered obsolete as blade dimensions increase, limiting their operational lifespan across projects.
The solution
Enter the M500: ARES Group’s modular blade trailer platform, engineered for stability first and future-proofing second. The M500 runs on a fixed 4.0m-wide platform for maximum stability under load, paired with a fully modular extension system rather than a fixed-length frame. In its current configuration, the M500 extends across three sections to run at 62 metres, with a fourth extension already engineered to take it out to 75 metres — and
the platform itself designed to be modular enough to eventually suit blades up to 100 metres. That modularity means the M500 isn’t a single-project asset. As blade lengths grow, the trailer grows with them, without a ground-up redesign every time the next turbine generation arrives.
On the Road at Uungula
The custom jacking system delivered load and offload times up to 5x faster than conventional methods, without the cost or setup time of a gantry crane — a meaningful gain on a project moving towers, blades, nacelles, transformers and containers for 81 turbines across two delivery stages.
Combined with ARES Group’s route planning and heavy-haulage expertise across the 340km corridor from Port of Henderson, the jacking system helped keep Warradarge’s turbine deliveries on schedule, giving Vestas a purpose-built, adaptable lifting solution for one of Western Australia’s largest wind farm builds.
The Result
For our client, the M500 delivers a blade transport solution scaled to Uungula’s needs today, with the headroom already engineered in for the longer blades the industry is moving toward. It’s a platform ARES Group can keep using project after project, rather than one built and retired with a single wind farm.
Project Details
Project: Uungula Wind Farm — M500 Modular Blade Trailer Deployment
Client: Squadron Energy & GE
Equipment: M500 modular blade trailer — 4.0m fixed-width platform, modular extensions currently to 62m (4th extension available to 75m), designed to scale to suit blades up to 100m.
Location: Warradarge, Western Australia (200km north of Perth)
Turbines: Uungula Wind Farm, NSW (northeast of Wellington)
