Participating in a discussion is a great way to learn and contribute to ideas for superstructing. When you post a comment, try to provide information that others may not know, and avoid getting into arguments. Winning discussions are all about working together to get smarter.

Please login or register to post


    PowerStruggle: Self-Sufficient High Rises

    Why not harness the wind that blows around skyscrapers?

    Started by: Nick Resonance Raves:1

    Subscribe » RSS

    Anyone that works or lives in a high-rise knows what I mean. The winds seem to blow constantly, and more fiercely the higher up you get. So why not put that wind to use? It was something I originally thought of almost ten years ago, when we had the first major oil crisis. It was just idle speculation then, and I still don't know enough about civil or electrical engineering to know if it's even feasible. But, what if you could adapt a high-rise to utilize power from wind farms connected directly to the high-rise itself? The roof comes to mind as an obvious location for such a farm, but what about dozens, hundreds or even thousands of small fans scattered across the face of the building? It might not look attractive, but who cares at this point? If this does work, it could take the pressure off the local grid, freeing up energy for emergency situations, critical infrastructure such as hospitals, or even just storing excess energy in massive batteries for later use. If wind power becomes efficient enough, entire buildings could operate completely independent of the grid. You could even supplement the wind farms with solar collectors on the roof and certain outer walls. There is so much that could be done if we could just put the work into it.

    I guess it would depend on how high the high-rise. I know that where I am - Portland, Oregon - our buildings don't really get tall enough to harness that sort of energy. The other downside is that in cities, the windflow is affected by the high-rises, so I don't know if there would be a consistent enough breeze. Still, with the smaller rotors, there might be enough energy generated to create at least a little power... Great idea!

    There are buildings which have wind turbines integrated into their structure, so it has been done. I believe the first was the Bahrain WTC ( http://bahrainwtc.com ). The question really is: what prevents it from being commonplace.

    Also, Philips investigated self-sufficient high-rises years ago. Their solution was a bio-mimetic skin which not only incorporated photovoltaics but collected and processed rainwater; a kind of high rise plantlife.

    Assuming that this discussion is still being followed, I have a few thoughts. Hundreds of small generators working together have one major problem: phase-syncing. Any kind of power generation that utilizes a turbine is producing dirty, 3 phase, AC power. You can't pool all of the electricity from these sources through one system, without serious line conditioning and syncing, and with that many sources, it'd be a major project. I wonder how they pulled it off in Bahrain?

    @SolarWindTripper - "Any kind of power generation that utilizes a turbine is producing dirty, 3 phase, AC power." Must it? If I remember my history/science, the compelling argument for AC over DC was in regards to transmission; and for the kinds of wind generation farms most often discussed, AC is arguably the only means to connect isolated aerogeneration units to the grid. However, if the wind turbine energy isn't being transmitted anywhere, but is instead used to charge energy storage components on site, are there then any problems?




    Nominate For A Badge

    Badge:
    More detail on badges



    NOMINATE CANCEL