First Wind Powered Federal Building

Roached writes "I ran across an article in our local paper about the United States' first wind powered federal building. It mentions that although the facility will have a slightly higher cost per Kilowatt Hour, they will have the long term benefit of pollution free energy at a stable price."

Comments

This is eminently sensible...

[castlan]

... if you believe that the government is lead by a bunch of windbags. Sure, the abundance of hot air should lead to economies of scale leading to lower energy cost, but they are called high-priced politicians for a reason.

And I'll bet this really burns up some fossil-fuel backed government officials.

Re:This is eminently sensible...

[n9hmg]

For some reason, they've taken the story down,

Not Found The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it.

and got it back off archive.org

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Did it have construction details or something?

This is such a joke...

[tswinzig]

And these buildings are STILL only getting 0 mpg!

intersting article

[216pi]

there is a very intersting article from new scientist including pics about wind powered buildings..

broken URL

[Inominate]

New URL, what kind of horrid site design is this where links change that often?

http://www.pressconnects.com/tuesday/news/stories/ ne081302s10797.shtml

Increased Cost

[PeekabooCaribou]

I think a slightly higher price tag is worth it. It's important to be environmentally-conscious, and it's probably hella cheaper to build alternative energy sources now that it would be to clean up our mess in the future.

Kilowatts vs. Kilowatt-hours

[DavidYaw]

The building now uses 500,000 kilowatts of energy per year.

...customers must purchase a minimum of... 200 kilowatts of power...

Am I the only one that got really annoyed by their interchanging of kilowatt and kilowatt-hour? (For the non-electrical types: kilowatt is a measure of flow, not of total energy. Saying that a building uses 500,000 kilowatts per year is like saying that your car gets 20 miles per gallon per day. )

It's about time...

[Dannon]

...the Feds started making use of wind-power.

After all, I understand they've got a continual excess of hot air moving around D.C.

Re:Better than the internet!

[Mt._Honkey]

So, are we measuring time in terms of Presidential Adminstrations now?

Yes. Time is measured by the executive branch (didn't you notice how much time slowed down in the long FDR years?). Physical laws and geologic facts are dictated by the legislative branch (as is evidenced by their energy policy of "burn lots of oil, and only oil, and we'll be fine for at least the next 50 Presidents).

Morals and Religion are governed by the Judicial branch, but they're much lower-profile, so most Americans don't even know about them.

I bet costs weren't reduced elsewhere

[Spamalamadingdong]

Unfortunately, this looks like something that came out of the PR department rather than the engineering department. Spending $10,000 per year for power from a wind farm is one thing, but spending the same amount on the most-efficient available HVAC hardware might save money. Finding a way to day-light the building could eliminate electricity altogether for that purpose. Using ice-storage in the air-conditioning system would allow purchase of off-peak power, save a pile of dough and reduce the load on the overworked lines and transformers when they're being hit the hardest.

Unfortunately, none of that is quite as amenable to sexy sound bites as "wind-powered building".

Re:I bet costs weren't reduced elsewhere

[Martin Blank]

Unfortunately, this looks like something that came out of the PR department rather than the engineering department.

I agree. I found particularly distasteful the following paragraph:

"Before the Clinton administration, wind power was too expensive, Alderfer said. But since then, technological improvements to the fans made it economically feasible."

I took this to mean that technological improvements in the last few years have made this possible. How Clinton figures into this is unclear, and I tend to think that it was either used as a chronological point of reference or else someone wanted to make him look good. Take your pick depending on your view. Either way, it's still poor journalistic practice.