Below is the text version for the DOE 1.5 Installation Time Lapse Video.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory installs a 1.5-MW wind turbine for the U.S. Department of Energy at its National Wind Technology Center located just south of Boulder, Colorado. The construction site is a grassy field that overlooks the eastern plains of Colorado. Two blue construction cranes work together to lift the first tubular steel section to the turbine's tower into place. Men, which, in this video, appear to be the size of ants next to the tower sections and cranes, scurry to and fro, attaching and detaching the crane cables to the tower sections while cars whiz by on a distant highway and cloud shadows race across the landscape creating a dizzy pattern on the surrounding fields.

After the first tower section is in place, construction workers and cranes work to attach the wind turbine blades to the cone-shaped hub on the ground next to the turbine tower, forming the rotor. The wind turbine has three blades. The two cranes work together, one on each end of a blade, to lift the blade, move it into place, and hold it while construction workers attach it to the hub.

After the rotor is assembled, the cranes lift the second and third tower sections into place. The larger of the two cranes then lifts the rectangular nacelle, which contains the generator, gearbox, and rotor shaft, to the top of the tower. The final lift is the rotor with its three blades. The cranes slowly lift the rotor from horizontal on the ground to vertical in the air and then the larger of the two lifts it into place and holds it while engineers connect it to the shaft at the front of the nacelle.