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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."
Again, no cooling effect. These are adding wind, they are sucking it up and converting it too electricity. Remember the 1st law, conservation of energy.
Dreaming that these things would have a cooling effect is like believing the following:
If you're on a sailboat and blow into the sales, you theoretically move the boat a little bit.
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
w/r/t the spillage problem, you could do this more simply with one large multivaned turbine.
The problem is that a design that maximizes use of the airflow means more minimum drag (when the fans are feathered to spill air). If you're too efficient you make a sail that drags your building s over.
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