A question: why doesn’t anyone put wind turbines on top of skyscrapers? Mythbusters just informed me that gusts at that height can reach 90 mph. Selling the produced electricity back to the grid might be problematic in a lot of places, but one imagines the energy could be used for the building’s heating and cooling plant. And it’d surely be a great marketing investment for a company looking to burnish its eco-credentials.
On the other hand, I imagine that “GIANT SPINNING BLADES” may be the sort of architectural feature about which zoning laws have something to say.
someone hasn’t been looking at their Wired fold-out sections lately:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/bahrain_install.php
10-15% of the building’s energy, although one would imagine that any building constructed to include wind turbines is probably energy efficient in a variety of other ways, if not LEED certified
Awesome. Good job, Bahrain.
The new Freedom Tower on the WTC site is/was supposed to have them, too, but I’m sure Larry Silverstein will get them chucked if he hasn’t already.
I’m under the impression that really high winds like that aren’t actually a good thing for wind power; supposedly, turbines operate best at like 30 mph.
I imagine it’s all in the design — I remember my MechE roommate in college rhapsodizing about propeller design. The optimally efficient shape does depend on the speed at which it’ll be operating. I can easily imagine that gusts might be harder to use efficiently.
Still, it’s gotta be possible to gain some benefit. It’s not like this is a problem that wind turbine designers haven’t faced before. That weird vertical axle design isn’t used more because it requires constant wind, for instance.
My architect-in-Bahrain-friend on those turbines:
“That was being built while we were working there. Its all bullshit. Structurally they found out the two buildings would fall over onto each other without those middle supports then they just slapped the wind turbines on. Theyâll barely work.”