nytimes.com— A new building with affordable rents in the Bronx will be powered partly by 10 wind turbines, which should cut its utility bills for common areas in half.
Jan 4, 2009View in Crawl 4
This is such a simple-in-concept idea: buildings create massive wind tunnels. The problem is execution, I don't see big wind turbines taking up precious real estate in any city any time soon.
I thought the same.I dated this crazy smart girl for a bit who was doing aeronautical engineering at uni, she once told me that at said uni two of the multi-story buildings created an unexpected interaction with regular local wind patterns causing vortices to form between the buildings and buffet them to a structurally unexpected level. So I totally expected this story to be about someone doing it deliberately to funnel regular winds from a large area to a small area between buildings that could power windmills or something :(
Not to mention maintenance costs. However i do beleive the only way we can ever hope to get free energy is to let projects like this happen, because they pay for research and development of more efficient models!In the UK cheap clean energy is hard to come by but <a class="user" href="http://www.uwpays.com">http://www.uwpays.com</a> is one company that does just that
cancerousJan 5, 2009
Even environment and savings aside, I want them simply because they are ridiculously cool looking.
emjaymjJan 6, 2009
Half of the COMMON AREAS. Making it cover only a tiny fraction of the entire building's actual usage. Still... it's a start I guess.
thayanmarshJan 6, 2009
While the savings might not seem huge compared to building the complex, the turbine will pay for itself before the building will.
jaygeezeJan 6, 2009
This is such a simple-in-concept idea: buildings create massive wind tunnels. The problem is execution, I don't see big wind turbines taking up precious real estate in any city any time soon.
graehJan 6, 2009
I thought the same.I dated this crazy smart girl for a bit who was doing aeronautical engineering at uni, she once told me that at said uni two of the multi-story buildings created an unexpected interaction with regular local wind patterns causing vortices to form between the buildings and buffet them to a structurally unexpected level. So I totally expected this story to be about someone doing it deliberately to funnel regular winds from a large area to a small area between buildings that could power windmills or something :(
carltMar 5, 2009
Not to mention maintenance costs. However i do beleive the only way we can ever hope to get free energy is to let projects like this happen, because they pay for research and development of more efficient models!In the UK cheap clean energy is hard to come by but <a class="user" href="http://www.uwpays.com">http://www.uwpays.com</a> is one company that does just that