Arantxa Esparza, from Nabrawind, awarded for best Spanish invention of 2023

The pile foundation patent for the Nabralift tower, which reduces concrete consumption by 80%, was awarded as the best patent of the year by the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office.   Nabrawind was the protagonist in the II OEPM 2023 Invention Award when Arantxa Esparza, project manager at the Spanish-based company, received the award for the best patent in the absolute category. The ceremony, held at the School of the Industrial Association in Madrid, honored the best patents and utility models granted in 2021 in Spain.

Arantxa Esparza during the acceptance of the award, presented by Pablo Garde, Undersecretary of Industry, Commerce and Tourism.

The awarded patent, of which Esparza is co-inventor together with Ricardo Savio, Ion Arocena and Eneko Sanz, protects a foundation solution where the traditional large surface slab is replaced by individual piles.

Esparza during the construction of the first pile foundation in Morocco.

This design allows for an 80% reduction in the amount of concrete used in the foundation, resulting in significant savings in cost and CO₂ emissions during the construction of a wind farm.

The award-winning technology has already been used in Nabrawind’s first wind farm in Morocco, confirming its advantages, and will be used this year in the company’s projects in France and China.

The Spanish Patent and Trademark Office distributed 6 awards in different categories, in an awards whose mission, according to its director Aida Fernandez, “is to promote innovation, creativity and talent in the country, and encourage inventors to protect their ideas”.

Esparza, an Industrial Engineer from the Public University of Navarre, dedicated the award to the other co-inventors and the rest of her colleagues at Nabrawind, thanking them for the support that innovation has always had in this company, which already has a portfolio of 20 patent families.

About Nabrawind Technologies

Nabrawind Technologies S.L. is a Spanish Company founded in 2015 for the design and development of advanced wind technologies. Current shareholders are the founders and the financial investors Barinaga y Alberdi, Sodena, Innoenergy and Basarro.

Nabrawind has developed five innovative products: Nabrajoint, Nabrabase, Nabralift, BladeRunner and Skylift.

Nabrajoint consists of a modular blade joint compatible with any blade that allow manufacturing large blades in separate modules that are assembled on site in a short period of time.

Nabrabase is a foundation solution for complex soils (very hard or very soft) and markets with a shortage of concrete or high labor costs. The tripod structure allows dividing massive gravity foundations into deep foundations with concrete reductions of up to 80%.

Nabralift is a self-erecting tower that can reach heights of 200 meters without the need for large cranes, providing minimum LCOE and breaking logistic and installation barriers.

BladeRunner is a new blade installation and de-installation system that reduces the cost of blade replacement up to a 70% compared to maintenance operations carried out with standard cranes.

Finally, Skylift is a new game changer product that allows to install the whole wind turbine at 15 m/s, a clear enabler of the new multi gigawatt wind farms planned for green hydrogen production at sites with high wind speed average.