Photo: State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Company
At 8:10 on September 24, State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Company organized and completed a helicopter-assisted high-altitude segmented tower erection operation in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province. This marked the company's first use of a helicopter for tower erection.
Due to the surrounding crab ponds and extensive muddy road sections at the site where the iron tower needed to be installed, construction machinery such as cranes could not reach the designated repair location.
Additionally, the dense river network made it impossible to find suitable positions for temporary anchor lines to meet the construction angle requirements. To ensure the safe and efficient progress of the construction operations, the company's equipment department urgently applied to State Grid Electric Power Space Technology Co., Ltd. for helicopter support, using a helicopter to lift the tower head for emergency repair operations.
This helicopter-assisted tower erection operation was challenging, intensive, and demanding. Traditional helicopter-assisted iron tower erection only involves the overall lifting of lightweight towers. However, the weight of the iron tower to be installed exceeded the helicopter's load capacity, necessitating the adoption of a method where the lower section was assembled on the ground, followed by the helicopter lifting the tower head, and finally conducting an "aerial connection."
During the operation, the pilot swiftly flew the helicopter and stably hovered above Tower 84 of the 220kV Dutang 4947 line. Following the signals from the commander, the pilot slowly lowered the lifted tower head, while the ground personnel used traction ropes to guide the upper section into the temporary track, enabling the nearly 3-ton tower head to precisely connect with the tower body. After 30 minutes of "air-ground" collaborative operations, the new Tower 84 of the 220kV Dutang 4947 line was fully assembled.