10 Small-Scale Wind Turbines Cut NYC Apartment Building’s Electric Costs in Half
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 01. 5.09
Obviously not on an apartment building in the Bronx, but at Logan airport in Boston, this is the sort of wind turbine to be installed by Blue Sea Development. Photo: AeroVironment
Though small scale wind turbines certainly have their drawbacks compared to their larger industrial-scale cousins, especially in urban areas (as the New York Times correctly points out), they can be put to good use. Witness an affordable housing project in the South Bronx which has deployed ten wind turbines to supplement the facility’s conventional power usage:
Turbines to Power Common Areas, Elevators
At Blue Sea Development Company’s newest five-story apartment building in the Melrose section of the Bronx, ten one-kilowatt wind turbines from AeroVironment will be installed. The electricity from the turbines will be used to power the building’s hallways, elevators and other common areas. The $100,000 investment in wind turbines will cut the building’s common electricity costs in half, according to a representative of Blue Sea Development.
Residents in the apartments, which will rent for $750-1,089 per month (yes, that’s considered affordable housing in NYC...), will have to sign up for ConEd electric service, but if they want to pay about 1-2 cents more per kWh they can sign up for one of ConEd’s green energy programs and be totally carbon neutral on the electricity front.
via: New York Times
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Wind power for elevators in a five-story building? NYC only requires elevators for buildings six stories or higher. It seems like an extraordinary luxury for subsidized housing. Perhaps elevators are an ADA mandate?
I read the NYT article. The few anecdotes that offered a cost comparison give numbers suggesting 11 to 13 years as a payback time. Not too bad, I guess, but I wouldhate to see any gov't subsidies spent on this stuff before it's spent on basic conservation techniques.
"Residents in the apartments, which will rent for $750-1,089 per month (yes, that’s considered affordable housing in NYC." I read that like it was supposed to be a dig... but where exactly is that not considered affordable housing at this point? I rent a house out west that costs that much, and several of my friends out in NYC pay up to twice as much for ghettoville apartments out there... Show me a $5k house that's big enough to stay in and I'll live in it, but even the concepts shown on this website would often result with a higher mortgage payment than NYC's rent if it were built.... a grand a month these days isn't anything to complain about- esp for renters.
Sooo... according to the rep at Blue Sea, the array will perform to a certain level. Umn, ok, sure thing. How much you want to bet that if we revisit this after a year of production, the amount of juice the array produces is well below expectations? I hope I'm wrong, I really do, but I know a lot about small scale and it never seems to produce as expected, unless you live on the beach or in the middle of Kansas. Better yet, what happens if/when a building of equal or greater height goes up nearby and totally screws the wind patterns?
Distribution and storage is the hard problem, not generation; and wind power makes this problem much worse.
You may be lowering your electricity cost but only because other customers and/or tax payers pay for the external costs.
Willy - nice thing about small scale is they can be repositioned cheaply!
There's a word missing from the title of this post, or several actually.
It should probably read "10 Small-Scale Wind Turbines Will Hopefully Cut NYC Apartment Building’s Common Electric Costs in Half"
Well gee, that's less encouraging. Stupid truth.
Also, the thing about elevators seems to be wrong, at least according to the NY Times article which states that the system which also requires a standard power plant in the basement, "will generate electricity for lights in the building’s hallways, elevators and other common areas."
And someone should really tell dredg about the tiny, small parts of America that exist between NYC and the west.
NYC buildings of 5 floors or less enjoy natural water pressure, but anything higher than that requires pumps and tanks. This would be the perfect service for windmills. You don't even need electricity, just rig the shaft to a pump! Demand is flexible, and intermittent supply of energy is OK. It may not be enough on its own, but it could supplement. Contractors could bundle a windmill set with the tanks and pumps.