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Living Inside A Giant Wind Turbine
A reader writes: "New Scientist has an article about buildings that incorporate numerous wind turbines. These neat office blocks can generate much of the own energy and the design of the building actually makes them more power efficient that regular turbines."
And you think that your job blows?
It seems it would only really be workable with really big buildings. In light of recent events how many people are going to be happy working in tall buildings?
It'll never take off.
324006
...would anyone really want to live or work right next to a 30 meter diameter turbine? I wouldn't.
'When The Sleeper Wakes' had a picture of these.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
They should use that when they rebuild the World Trade Center -- twice as tall as the original.
As a side affect, you might get cheap air conditioning. No more worries about hot stuffy offices. Probably no more "sick building" problems either.
******
"What makes you think I care about your opinions?"
Isn't the biggest problem with wind power the vibrations that make doing delicate things like chip fab impossible?
AFAIK, wind turbines generate considerable low-frequency noise. Unless this problem is seriously addressed, such a building would be somehow uncomfortable.
Though, wind flowing through a thight agglomeration of skyscrapers generates noise anyway %-)
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
Finally a use for all the hot air my PHB produces.....
Oh arse
What happens during tornado/hurricane/santa-ana-style winds? Sure, they can turn the props off (although won't they break?) but what about the shape of the building "focussing" the wind down near the ground?
324006
The article mentioned cooling effects. Does this mean that we'll get giant snow generators in the winter?
Reboot macht Frei.
I'm a great fan.
Looks like now we have a new plan for the World Trade Center.
So they say the street noise would make the noise of the generators less of a problem. But they also want to build these into apartment buildings - where during the night at least, people will want things to be quiet. Do they turn them off in the night?
I am also wondering about the output of these things. Since they can't be turned to face the wind, I guess you can only use them where you have a more or less steady wind in one main direction. I am not sure this is really useful in many places. And then, you need a lot of free space around such a building, otherwise you won't get a lot of wind into the propellers in the first place. So I'm not really sure if this is such a hot idea.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
As far as this article is concerned, I don't see this design going into the replacement for the WTC. Buildings today are carefully designed to obstruct as little wind as possible. Having giant turbines between two buildings over an avenue would place massive forces on the buildings. It's hard enough designing skyscrapers, I doubt the designers are keen to add extra force to compensate for.
But what about one of the other problems with turbine generated power? Namely birds being killed by flying through the path of the turbines. Can you imagine sitting at a redlight beside one of these buildings and suddenly having the front half of a pigeon land on your windshield?
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
If not, I'm sure some Ex-US-President allready ordered :-)
And I also would like one of them.
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
So how exactly could this idea be implemented on building built in areas with eartquakes? The design I saw on the article invites disaster: IANAEE, but I think the turbine in at least that design could be shaken enough to fall in a big earthquake, producing serious damage.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
This is an excellent idea; office blocks have to be some of the most power hungry buildings there are, and this could really cut down on energy/natural resource usage, pollution etc.
I would have to imagine that even once maintenance is taken care of, the energy savings this could make would quickly pay for the initial setup cost.
My only concern is the noise - the article suggests that noise may be damped by insulation, however given that rural turbines are criticised for noise pollution, I suspect that the effect of sound insulation is still not going to be enough to make it a pleasant working environment. When the small fridge in the corner of our office starts whirring occasionally (solved by a swift kick) that tiny noise soon becomes irritating. Imagine even a supposedly acceptable but constant hum all day, every day. This could really have a bad effect on the nerves of workers inside the building.
What about doing a building like this to replace the WTC?
It would make a statement for energy efficiency, reducing dependence on foreign energy, and reducing global warming.
maybe they could also supply wings so the building could fly away before the airplane hits in it.
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
*WHEN* we rebuild the World Trade Center, it would be a great idea to incorporate this technology.
Imagine having these turbines up around the 150th floor of the new, curved, 21st century World Trade Center... just the prototype in the article.
*That* would show our financial resiliancy, and usher in a newer, evolved skyline for Manhattan in the modern era. The towers were impressive before, but the pinnacle of 1969 architecture. This building could be a tribute to the people of New York, the people of America, the people of the world, AND to the Earth itself, being enviro-friendly enough to generate much of its own power!
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Traffic in cities would also drown out most of the noise, he suggests.
Right. And I would suggest he's wrong. Traffic might still be the prevailing noise, but I sincerely doubt that the sound signals are such that the sum of the sounds will be the same as the traffic by itself. It may not be overtly noticable, but this would increase the baseline noise in the city.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
What I would like to know is, if we adopt wind turbines wholesale, what the effect will be on the local climate?
A good wind turbine takes up to 45% of the kinetic energy out of the wind. In built up areas, just think, the lower winds would result in increased build-up of pollution from vehicles.
What will it do to weather patterns if we significantly alter the flow of air around the place?
The presence of wind generators near vehicles will result in the vehicles having to expend more energy to displace the air around them since the wind turbines will be causing extra resistance. Since no system is 100% efficient, more energy will have to be expended by the vehicles than is reclaimed from the turbines.
What will happen to passers-by if one sheds a blade?
Will any country ever build buildings that large again in light of recent events in the USA?
This isn't a troll or flame. I would just like some answers...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
The article mentions trouble with the noise...now, in rural areas it may not be a concern so it might not be addressed by current technology.
I know that there are headsets that regulate noise by creating a 180 degree out-of-phase wave that sums with the incoming sounds to produce silence...could some sort of similar technology be employed to at least dampen the high frequency emissions?
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Hum. Maybe that will finally keep my overclocked system from crashing...
Me! Me! Can I put my ATX Tower open in front of it?
What about the constant flow of pigeon bits flying out of the thing?
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison
In a rural setting, one expects quiet, in an urban setting one expects noise. Consequently put a turbine inthe country and people will complain about the noise, put one in the city, and they probably won't notice the noise.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Wind turbines in rural areas are often criticised for detracting from the landscape and for generating noise pollution. Stankovic says noise insulation around the turbines could dampen sound. Traffic in cities would also drown out most of the noise, he suggests.
Engineer 1: Wind power is such a good resource, I wish there was some way for us to tap into it.
Enginner 2: Yeah, but they are loud and ugly and they piss people off. Where can we put them?
Engineer 1: Hmmm, good point. Wait, how about in the middle of a city? They are already ugly and loud, nobody would ever know the difference.
Engineer 2: That's a great idea. We could even incorporate them into the buildings themselves. We'll call it a new paradigm. I've always wanted to use that word.
Several problems with this idea:
1) Take the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, they have a skybridge between them that has to be flexible since the towers move independently. The wind turbines would have to do the same on their buildings.
2) Traffic would not "drown out" the noise. The sound of the turbines would simply add to the overall noise of the city. Especially inside the buildings.
I still think its a great idea to use various means of generating electricity rather than relying on a few huge sources though!
I believe this would be a great design for a New World Trade Center. It's beautiful, energy efficient and large. Definitely almost looks like the WTC (twin tower type design....). It would also prevent power outages from taking out your whole building. It would be a great way to get people and companies to put offices in these buildings.....advertised free or discounted electricity.
I do not fear working in a tall skyscraper because working in a tall building is not what killed these people. I believe it would be impossible to build something that can take the force of these type of blasts. If you do fear working in these type of buildings, well then the terrorists have already won. They want you to be afraid of them and you need to be strong and show them you are not afraid of them.
Gorkman
You know this proposal's gone the moment GreenPeace realizes what happens to pigeons when they get near this thing...
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
We all know that buildings sway a lot (several feet at the top). We also all know that electricity can be generated by piezoelectric strips that bend. Has anyone tried running a long piezoelectric strip up a building?
I know they were able to generate electricity from the rising and falling of waves by using piezoelectrics, maybe the same idea would work here.
Travis
Furethermore I believe multiple small fans would be more efficient. Now, IANAAE (I am not an aeronautical engineer) but the total airflow through a large fan's housing is much greater than the amount of airflow that actually pushes the fan (obvious). Many small fans could fill that area more completely and harvest more of the total airflow.
Any thoughts?
Don't know where they got this statement from:
turbines have a dramtic colling effect on the structure.
This is not true. The turbines would actuall warm the structure. The turbines could only cool the structure if they were self-propelled by some fuel, but the turbines actually slow do the wind. In fact for maximum thermo-dynamic power transfer, the wind flowing through would be losing at least 50% of its umph....
The above statement leads be to believe that nobody is really taking this seriously.
"this shit will never fly"
"the shit just shit the fan"
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
As I've maintained for a long time now, we as a species need to start looking HARD at alternative energy. Geothermal, fuel cells, solar, wind, biomass, whatever! The article has some good ideas, maybe they won't be directly used, but they'll contribute to better ideas later on.
Big oil continues to keep us on her teat, it's a bond that we must one day break. When the wells go dry, heaven help us if we don't have a means to capture the energy around us.
Wanted: Someone to stand below power generating turbines with a large net to catch Pidgeon McNuggets as they fall to the sidewalk below.
I'd love to have a building like that in TX. The uncertain "cooling effect" could save millions over the life of the structure in air conditioning costs, which is arguably more than 75% of electrical costs in TX during the summer months, and our summer is about 7 months long.
I'd like to see a triangular design, because rather than just one bank of turbines, you could have 3, by only adding one more building. Of course, only two faces could run at a time without creating a stalemate pressure system in the center, but even that should be more than just one face produces, and would get the benefits of turbines that spin to face the wind direction.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
The added efficiency of this design, over that of a typical wind power farm is derived primarily from the curvature of the buildings between which the fans are placed. How cost effective is ti to construct curved buildings? There are certain efficiencies gained with regard to interior area of such a structure, but those benefits are lost due to the rectangular block layout of the cities in which the building sould be constructed. Even with the greater efficiency of the turbines, would the Return of Investment of such a structure have an even remotely reasonable horison, given the added cost of the constructuin (not only of the turbines but if the curved structure)? It doesn't seem so.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I visited a large wind turbine in Norfolk in the UK. The local paper had a story on the front page about the sun's reflection on the blades causing one of the locals to have epileptic fits.
Seems all technological advances have their drawbacks if you look hard enough!!
This is really interesting - this is the sort of research that makes me happy to hear about. A lot points out the killing of birds, noise etc. but in reality most of these issues are already being addressed in research. Here in Denmark we have some of the largest windmill parks in the world. One just outside the capital Copenhagen is generating 3% of all the energy used by the city.
. dk/news/webcam.htm
But this could be used on low ground as well. I'm doing some parachuting and when landing you always have to stay clear of buildings. A large hangar could easily produce turbulence up to 300 yards away. If this was a set of urban buildings 4-5 stores high, placed in the correct direction, you could actually place the wind turbine in the end, or in a tunnel connected to the end of the building, to move the turbine it-self away to minimize noise. Great potentials...
Birds... well use a grid or net of some sort.
In time (20-100 years from now) we need to be using 100% pure energy, like wind and sun, fission (when it comes) etc... This is not something we can choose not to! We are running out of fossil fuels, and it will be in our lifetime. (At least I plan to live for some years to come).
Copenhagen/Middelgrunden:
http://www.windpower
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
they can reverse power flow and use them as big fans to keep city dwellers cool.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
When wind is used to move a windmill/fan/turbine, does the wind keep going through that, or is it "absorbed", and there's less wind after the turbine?
I would think that it would be absorbed by the moving fan, changing the state of the energy, but I don't know.
Berto
The problem with building something as tall as the WTC is that the buildings have to be made flexible because of wind, etc. In other words, there are trade offs between strength against impact and flexibility.
Why do people think these are going to be loud? Perhaps because people are used to hearing the word "turbines" in the context of jet engines? These are not jet engines. They're not even electric fans. No roar, no hum, not even the whoosh of air. Perhaps an occasional squeak due to bearings that need to be oiled. That's about it.
bp
Using the new Wind Panel design the new Word Trade Center welcomes the US into the next generation of self sustaning cities.
Never before has an office complex given power back to their host city. Now thanks to the rapid removal of the old structures energy efficient structures are taking their place.
Truly, this is a NEW New York.
comment directly in my journal
This design depends on having two towers, which must increase cost, I'd expect. What if a single tower had a couple of "floors" at the top to house some horizontally mounted turbines (of a diameter almost equal to the width of the building)? You might also be able to (partially?) shield them from view.
Government official: Damn, we're paying too much for all this social housing. How can we make more money off of poor people?
Engineer: I know, make them live in power stations.
Deleted
I'm going to be build a new home soon in a rural area, in an area known for high-winds.
Would it be feasible to augment my power with a wind setup? What are the costs? Who provides this equipment to residential users?
What was that bull about it possibly being more difficult to have such a structure built due to the cost of having to have precise curve? I see strangely shaped building all over the place that are that way for nothing more than aesthetics (sp?). Straight, curved, pyramid or just plain weird, would you want to work in a building that was not laid out precisely? Aren't the tallest buildings in the world (in Singapore?) round, and don't they have a crosswalk that vaguely resembles the cross-struts in the articles concept picture?
Not only do I see this as an excellent idea, but if I owned the Sears Towers in Chicago I would investigate the possibility of such an addition (to provide crosswalks AND power).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Interesting thought here from a non-engineer:
If the buildings experience side effects of unintentional cooling, perhaps this design is, thus, best suited for a warmer environment.
This makes me wonder therefore if there are a variety of possible energy-saving building designs - that are best suited for different environments. What can work best in a given environment to use renewable energy resources? Is there research going on in this area?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I'm not an expert, but perhaps the cooling effect would be from the fact that the structure is shaped to draw in more wind (as opposed to traditional buildings, which some have commented are usually designed to *reduce* the amount of wind).
Maybe the cooling effect of the extra wind between the structures would counter the heating effect of sucking the energy out of the wind?
Stuart.
...we can switch them to reverse!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Hmm, 2 really large buildings joined together.
Do they remind you of the World Trade Center?
Anyway, they look cool and would be very good at helping clear the air in a large polluted city...
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
These types of buildings are not uncommon in NYC, I know of abot a half dozen. Ever seen Superman 3?
The construction costs are not particularly high, as the arch of the building (even inverted) allows greater flexibility and strength on the curved side.
Really, conservation of energy supports the idea of the turbine cooling the building. Or at least the air passing thru the turbine. The turbine is outputting energy in the form of electricity. Where did that energy come from? Primarily the kinetic energy of the wind. Since heat is pretty much a specialized type of kinetic energy, it's not hard to imagine that the turbine would extract some amount of heat from the air.
I'm not an expert in the field, and I can imagine the opposite happening too. The turbine would take kinetic energy out of the air and convert it to both heat in the air and energy in the turbine. But neither case would violate the conservation of energy.
Social security official: If only we could reduce the number of recipients, the system might just work.
Engineer: How about putting rotating blades right into the buildings where they live and work?
and to clarify, we have fusion, it just isn't efficient.
A quick point about your sig. Computers actually make very quick, very precise mistakes. There is no such thing as an accurate mistake.
>:]
"Hear that giant sucking sound...that's me saving the government more money with my giant turbeen!"
--Ross Perot
You may have that problem for a while, but not long term. You will reduce the pigeon population, therefore less pigeons to hit the fan -- less mess.
Fight Spammers!
This story remindes me of the days back when I was a kid watching, "What Will They Think of Next?" and thinking, "Wow! The future is going to be a clean, efficient and good spirited place to live! I can't wait to get there!"
In my cynical older years when I see so much corruption and bullshit around me, it is really, really nice to read about some of the benevolent 'Future-perfect' ideas from my childhood actually being implemented.
-Fantastic Lad
The only way to get wind power competitive is *mass production*. Architects will always want to adapt the wind turbine to their building, which requires very expensive fluid dynamics simulations.
The only cheap way to use wind power on office buildings is to put a conventional unit on the roof.
its a cool idea, but if you get enough of these in a building like, say, Chicago and you are going to dramatically reduce the amount of airflow through that city. We already know how awful that city can smell at times, imagine how bad it gets with no circulation. Don't forget the heat.
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i would think that just as england was not the right place for solar-powered street meters, a tornado prone place, like say, oklahoma, would not be the place for buildings like this. I think somewhere like Chi-Town or New York would easily benefit from this, given their storm likliehoods...
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wouldn't it be great to see a stupid terrorist land in the middle of one of those turbines?
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We used to build giant wind turbines (read big windmills) for electricity until we sold off that business in the late 80s, I believe to a Swedish company. There was a case where we had a very large turbine(believe it was one of the largest in the world at the time) set up in the midwest. One day, an old ladies house just all of a sudden collapsed. This house was on a hill something like 5 miles away, and it was strucurally fine. As it turned out, the natural sound waves that were produces by the slow spinning blades happened to be just the right frequency to cause the house to collapse. Who would have thunk? Obviously, no one.
The moral of the story is nothing is free and totally clean. Everything has a side effect. It wouldn't be such a good thing to place one of these in a city and then 6 months later have a dozen buildings 5 miles away go toppling down. The idea is great, but that doesn't mean its the right thing to do.
http://www.windpower.dk/tour/design/horver.htm
They point out some drawbacks, but might this be something to consider?
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Placing a turbine in the flow of the hot air would just slow it down. In order to compensate for this you would have to apply even more power into the intake fans blowing cool air into the buildings. Because the motors and power systems aren't 100% efficient, the total efficiency goes down and you consume even more power.
Willy
PS Interesting... I didn't realize that Slashdot automatically marked up URL references with the site's hostname.
What sort of damage would those spinning turbine blades do if they were shattered, perhaps by the impact (accidental, even) of a small plane?
When last were you in a building where they did "chip fab"? Most buildings are used for more mundane things like offices. Most people have never even seen a building where "chip fab" is performed.
Except then you'd create SUPER pigeons through natural selection. Only those pigeons tough enough to fly through a turbine would survive, and they would be INDESTRUCTIBLE! Just imagine how the pigeon population would explode then, it would make antibiotic resistant bacteria look like a blessing.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Now thanks to the rapid removal of the old structures energy efficient structures are taking their place.
I'd settle for less 'rapid removal' in future, if you don't mind. While important to rebuilding, let's not lose sight of the people involved and affected by it. It seems a bit early for heralding the 'new World Trade Center' when the old one is currently still lying in rubble.
Delphis
And here are the rotating knives.
Oh dear, is that not what you planned.
This architecture/engineering firm lead by Jan Kaplicky is one of the only firms working with ideas of conservation and using reusable materials. They had a proposed housing block with a different type of wind power. I don't believe that these fans turn at a fast rate of speed so pigeons getting chopped up or noise i don't think is an issue.
Their project with a wind generator was called Project Zed. http://www.rpreston.com/apaszed.htm The first few floors would have typical commerical then the upper floors would be office space then the top floors would be residential and a park/pool at the top. They said this building would be able after a few years to PROVIDE electricity to the buildings around it. Thus this kind of building would cost less in the long run but the initial cash imput is high.
Future Systems also completed the addition to some famous sports stadium in the UK http://www.Future-Systems.com/LORDS.html , where they built the building like a ship out of Aluminum so a large percent of the building {~80%) can be recycled. What does happen to buildings once they are collapsed, i doubt any of them get recycled at all. the interior is modeled similar to an high class airplane interior.
Buildings need to be made more like cars and airplanes, i doubt our generation will see it but it's coming.
Peter A Lopez
I have noticed a few posts so far mentioning how a lot of sound might be generated from the fans, and more posts dismissing the idea, although they have provided no corroboration.
I cannot provide any links as corroboration for what I am about to add to this discussion, other than I know that is true. You are free to accept it as you will.
Those fans are not going to run at any high speed. They will most likely be 300 rpm or lower. That means low frequency hums, growls and vibrations. Remember sound can also be transmitted through attached structures as vibration.
My point is that sound is going to be generated, regardless of how well they are designed. Case in point
The town of Lethbridge is located in Alberta, Canada, just north of the U.S. border. It is an extremely windy city, and has a university - the University of Lethbridge. There is a spot on campus that had wind funneling through it all year round, so they decided to install some fans to generate power.
Smart move. Reason why?
Campus-wide depression of students and staff began to rise, and the number of suicides went up. Not dramatically, but up, nonetheless.
As one poster has mentioned already (re: the epileptic seizures) - you never know the full effects of implementing a technology until it goes in, no matter how you try to 'plan' for it.
Rock
Have you ever been near a wind turbine? I've been as close as 150 feet to one and THEY'RE REALLY LOUD. Not anything like a gentle 'whoosh, whoosh' but more of a constant roaring noise. Asking the locals within 3 miles of them reveals they had no idea the damned things would be that loud.
Putting one in a building setting seems like it would require considerable insulation against that noise.
Note that the curvature is up in the tower: the limit of the street grid applies to the block that the towers emerge from, not the towers themselves.
Indeed, supposing that the long axis of the street grid is N/S, it seems as if you would be able to swing orientation over a range in the decision of whether the towers will rise NE/SW, N/S, or NW/SE.
It might not be perfectliy cost efective, but think of the pr-value and the real cool look. So you build a scyscraper, and get a monument and do something for the environment for just a few bucks extra. :)
I've heard that wind-mills aren't cost-efficient - they are most often built out of aluminium, and the amount of electricity, measured in watt-hours, needed for melting and processing the aluminium is about equal to the total amount that you can get out of the wind-mill during its lifetime.
No natural light would be the show stopping minus for sub surface office buildings. I know us techy types don't mind not seeing the Big Blue Room; however it seems to be important to the PHB/MBA types out there.