Having given thought to a claim by IBM that they are developing a game-changing solar PV technology (see
Tipping point coming in photovoltaics?) I felt kind of compelled to see whether the same might be happening in wind power generation. As these things are prone to happen, there was a ready-made post in
archdaily describing a project by a team from Australia’s
University of Wollongong and marine engineering firm
Birdon, to
develop PowerWINDows – a new type of wind-to-energy conversion
technology that they claim might be particularly suitable for use on
urban skyscrapers. Author
Nicky Rackard leads off with:
"It seems like the natural thing to do, exploiting the height and
shape of energy-consuming high-rises by installing wind-turbines to
off-set power needs. However, past experience has shown that it’s not
all that easy. Aside from generating power, turbines also generate
noise, vibration and turbulence, which means they are ideally located in
the countryside, or off-shore, miles away from civilization."
The point is well illustrated by London’s
Strata Tower. For the couple of years during design and construction, its developers claimed that the three structurally integrated axial wind turbines would provide up to 8% of the building's energy. Since completion in 2010, a different story dominates the blogosphere;
the turbines spend most of their time
lying idle.
The University of Woolongong initiative tries a different tack. The system is described as "an array of small panels arranged in a grid. Each panel is a miniature
turbine in itself, which rotates with the direction of the wind, unlike
traditional turbines which run perpendicular to it. By changing the
direction of rotation, the wind the panels generate less noise and whip
up less turbulence, they also place less stress on the supporting
structure."
To date there has been a considerable body of literature which suggests that the wind regime of urban environments is too turbulent, and otherwise variable, to be actually efficient for building integrated wind power. In spite of the wonderfully evocative rendering of a gossamer-like array mounted between the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (look carefully at the image above), I am not holding my breath that this is the enabling breakthrough.
But I have also learned over the last few years that it is as dangerous to say something can't be done, as to prematurely claim success.
Finally, a gratuitous comment.
Nicky Rackard is remarkably prolific on Inhabitat, and I feel churlish to criticize. But the Razor (as the Strata SE1 tower is known by Londoners) was by no means the first building to have conventional wind turbines integrated into its form. That honour might belong to the Bahrain World Trade Center, with three wind turbines,
which are located on three stacked bridges between the building's
two towers. At 29m diameter, they are not just much bigger than the three 9m diameter wind turbines on the Strata SE1, but were completed in the year that Strata started construction.
That was the title of an article in Building Green back in 2009. As author, and most prolific contributor, Alex Wilson said at the time:
