Skyscraping for Wind Energy | Green Energy News

December 24, 2008 – Vol.13 No.40

SKYSCRAPING FOR WIND ENERGY.
by Bruce Mulliken

There’s a wind resource that goes largely untapped. It’s a global phenomena. It’s strong and reliable. Grid connections to put it to work are already in place. It’s the urban wind, the wind that flows up, over and around tall buildings.

Anyone who’s walked the streets of any big city has felt the effect. Even on days when there’s little wind, a breeze or a gust can occur as air is compressed and funneled around the corners of buildings.

And that’s only part of the urban wind story.

The higher we go into the atmosphere the stronger wind gets. (Imagine if we could tap the power of the world’s jet streams in the stratosphere!) Globally, wind resources are far better at high altitude then they are near the ground: The higher up the better the wind resource.

In cities, where acreage brings a premium price it makes more economic sense to build vertically than horizontally. Building toward the sky means building toward ever improving wind resources. By now, with concerns about global warming and the long-term cost of energy, you’d think that every skyscraper being built would with have building-integrated wind energy systems. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Yet all is not lost. Owners of tall buildings can still add wind capacity to their rooftops. AeroVironment, of Monrovia, California, offers a propeller-type turbine that can be clipped to the edge of a roof. It’s intended to harness winds that push up the sides of buildings.

There’s more. A newcomer to the selection of small wind turbines that can be used for rooftop and a wide variety of wind applications is the vertical axis AR-10 Tilt Rotor from Boise, Idaho-based CPM Precision Machine. The turbine, which has the ability to tilt into the wind for better performance, captures wind from any direction. The company calls it the “The Strong, Silent type, A robust system which operates cleanly in stormy and light wind conditions, the windmill needs neither electronic controls nor directional mechanisms which allow it to harvest wind simply and easily from any direction.”

With thanks to the Oppenheimer Development Corporation the company’s first production turbine has been in installed atop the 12 story Oppenheimer/Wells Fargo Bank Building in Boise, where it’s powering the annual Christmas light display.

Since the new product’s launch this Fall, CPM has received interest domestically and from as far away as Australia, Israel, India and Central Europe.

Links:

CPM Precision Machine
http://www.cpmach.com

AeroVironment
http://www.avinc.com

--- Energy Innovation Potpourri

--- AeroVironment Architectural Wind System Installed at Boston’s Logan International Airport.