Quote of the Day: What's So Funny About Wind Power?

I did some work three years back for a consortium put together by the City of Chicago and Galt Partners. The goal was to come up with ways to implement wind power into the "Windy City".

Our first idea was to mount vertical axis turbines horizontally on the tops of buildings. Low visual impact and the turbines would have excellent access to (lots of) wind.

While it was a bright idea (and indeed cost effective due to the high cap factor and wind speeds when you are 20+ stories up) ultimately it was undo able due to engineering constraints. The roofs of those buildings simply weren't meant for that sort of load and effects of such a large lateral load on the building were unknown. Its not that the building's frame couldn't hold it, it was doubtful that we could securely anchor the turbines to the roof without major re-engineering/rebuilding the top floor).

The push in cities such as New York and Chicago should be for cogeneration. If done properly with absorption cooling, primary energy use can be halved while putting less stress on the grid and making the entire city less vulnerable to terrorist attack.

I'd bet half the buildings in NY and CH are suitable for co-gen retrofits....

Heh, why not? We've already got radio towers, cell antennas, satellite dishes, and helicopter landing pads up there. How is that anymore ridiculous?

And yeah, the Dutch were using them hundreds of years ago... Why did we stop using them?

I believe the Bank of America building at 1 Bryant Park already has some vertical wind turbines on the roof. There's a ton of wind around skyscrapers. It seems like a no-brainer to put some turbines up there.

Here, you can see the wind turbine on this page:

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID157.htm

Sorry for the double post.

I read the article, the suggestion is that the windmills would be of the style used 300 years ago, ie huge stone edifices and not the sleek modern turbines used today, so hence the sarcasm by the Times writer. I don't think New Yorkers are going to complain too much if wind power lowers their power bills.

It's possible that some buildings and structures could take wind mills. But a few questions have to be answered first:

Is there enough wind, enough of the time to justify it?

Can the structure of the building accept the additional loads that a windmill will impose?

Is there a place another nearby to place a windmill that would be just as good, but cheaper and easier?

Will the vibrations of the wind mill be too intrusive for building occupants/what must be done to smooth out the vibrations?

To answer The Times, most are eating chocolate.

Wind turbines are awesome and beautiful, but they need to get left off the Brooklyn Bridge and other iconic pieces of architecture. You just don't mess with a classic.

Edison and Tesla dabbled with electricity transport and transformation back in the 19th century. Didn't they come up with this Nobel prize worthy invention of a power line. AC for short distances and DC for longer.

In a civilized society there is no need to produce one's own food, one's own houses etc. Nor should there be any real need to produce one's own solar or wind electricity "in house". If one still insists on home made, so please do it in a suitable place like a desert for sun and windy countryside for wind and use these marvelous power lines for transport.

Decent feed-in tariffs obviously badly needed for wind power producer Bloomberg and locations other than Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty.

The thing is that the wind resource in cities is pour. Not only is the average wind speed low, the wind is also turbulent. This makes urban wind turbines very inefficient. The money is better spent on windparks in the country and off-shore.

If the Times thinks that's funny, they should come see the one in the middle of Toronto. It's hilarious, in that zany way that it generated power - from the wind! Wild!
http://www.windshare.ca/explace/the_wind_turbine.html

We can all laugh at these things - but will we be laughing when oil runs out and we have the ocean up to our knees in our homes? These photoshop pictures are great, as it raises awareness. And the more they proliferate, the more people will get used to the idea. So bring them on! Lets see them

To put this in context, New York State is already FIFITIETH of the fifty states in terms of per-capita energy consumption, entirely due to the built-in energy efficiencies of New York City. I applaud this, but NY is already doin' it. I envision this will be useful in affluent buildings, and may be most easily adapted to government buildings too.

The most useful undertaking might be making our buildings more efficient in natural ventilation, so we have less heat exhaust from a/c in the summer. This would lower outside temperatures, causing a virtuous cycle which would further cut the need for a/c.

What's funny is a spaced-out mayor who keeps making promises he can't keep based on little evidence, aside from his own wishes.

Here in Hawaii, where the trade winds blow consistently, it's a complete waste of resources not to put vertical wind turbines on the buildings, adding supplemental power.