A Liebherr LR 11350 crawler crane operated by Schmidbauer has completed the main lifting work for a 365m wind turbine prototype in Lusatia, Brandenburg, Germany.
The crane was deployed on the project from spring 2025, erecting the steel lattice structure and installing the 3.8MW turbine.
The largest lift involved a tower section measuring about 40 metres in each dimension and weighing 375t.
Using its PowerBoom parallel-boom arrangement, the LR 11350 placed that component on a 50m base structure from a radius of about 44m.
The crawler crane travelled along a purpose-built route using steel plates and bongossi timber to make the lift.
The tower was assembled to an initial height of about 160m. During this phase, the crane used the PowerBoom configuration, a jib tip of up to 84m and as much as 850t of ballast on the crane and derrick ballast platform.
Schmidbauer then reconfigured the crane to fit the turbine’s three rotor blades. The change from the PowerBoom to a 104m lattice boom took six days, according to Liebherr.
Combined with an 84m luffing jib, the arrangement gave the crane a roller-head height of 200m.
Following a wait for suitable low-wind conditions, crews installed the 126m diameter rotor’s three blades at a height of around 170m within 12 hours, with some work carried out overnight.
At the time completion, crane operator Fabian Ueck said: “During its approximately 18-month period of operation, my LR 11350 performed with absolute reliability and without any faults.
After the blades were fitted, the structure’s internal telescopic tower was raised using an integrated system, taking the installation to its final height of 365m.
Liebherr stated that the structure is the world’s tallest wind turbine and Germany’s second-tallest tower overall, surpassed only by Berlin’s television tower.
The prototype was developed and built by Dresden-based GICON-Großmann Ingenieur Consult and installed within an existing wind farm.
