<<< Wind Energy Skyscrapers >>>

[JWmHarmon]

Eco-geek offers 10 skyscrapers using ecologically friendly designs including wind power generation.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/695/

1.The Bahrain World Trade Center Towers, Kingdom of Bahrain
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

2. The Pearl River Tower, Guangzhou, China
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Compare number 8 to the original post for this thread in this forum.

8.Waugh Thistleton Residential Tower, London
ON THE DRAWING BOARD

[mx2]

I certainly agree with the potential for ADDING wind generated power "plants" on high-rises...it's a fantastic idea in dense ateas that require loads of energy. But to just build a tall frame and slap large fans on it and walk away is not a viable investment. The cost of real estate in dense areas typically won't make economic sense to begin with, even if it were an attempt to be purely a "vertical power plant". And it's a classic NIMBY...who wants to live or work near a power plant? However, if it served a dual purpose, then there is some merit...but what would it's purpose serve? Ooh, I know...how about an occupiable building that has turbines on it?

{sacrasm off}

mx2.5

[JWmHarmon]

gaetanomarano's original post was for an electrical generation power plant harvesting wind power. Such a power plant could be built in locations selected to maximize the collection of wind energy. This location would not be significantly different from building a new coal-fired power plant and the energy would be transmitted over similar power lines.

When you consider the size of the cooling towers in a coal-fired plant, it may not be unreasonable to build a scyscraper for wind energy power generation.

gaetanomarano' suggestion could possibly be modified so that the generators, instead of being on the outside, might be located on the inside of the building. Such a building's interior might be funnel shaped (Venturi) on the inside to accelerate the updraft to drive vertical or horizontal turbines.

The outside of the building could contain cantilevered decks for food crop gardens. This idea would combine gaetanomarano's idea with some of the ideas from two or more of the eco-skyscrapers posted previously.

gaetanomarano - If you have time why don't you draw an interior and an exteior view of this idea. I'm playing lumberjack this week, cutting some heavy timbers out of a tree that was struck by lighning. I don't have the time.


Speaking of lightning, why can't we just capture electons out of the air and store them in skyscraper sized Leydon jar buildings using a 21st century update of Ben Franklin's kite and key concept. How much energy could be stored in a series of Leydon jars or batteries filling up the inside of the skyscraper or a coal-fired plant's coolingtower, or a containment dome of a nuclear power plant? Could the building structure itself itself be built of modified battery cases?

[thomasdbiggs]

Hey, that's a great idea. It's intriguing how one would look. The design possibilities are endless. Heres one: propeller blades are mounted over the vents to mechanical spaces at such a distance that air would channel through the propellers spinning them, as the heated air rises through a chimney type exhaust vent above. Also, if the mechanical intake air is not stronger than the wind, the propellers could pivot to match the direction of the strongest wind.

Food for thought.

[mx2]

[alexneverhurts]

p.s.:

Somebody just put a huge fan on top of a tall building so that the building can be called "green"? How about asking some genius in MIT to invent certain adjustable semi-transparent solar panel that covers the whole building to block burning sunlight and generate power for AC?

Just kidding.

[psikeyhackr]

The obvious problem is tha those rotors couldn't change direction and ratate into the wind for maimum efficiency.

Who would pay for the construction of a building that ugly?

psik

[gaetanomarano]

[gaetanomarano]

[mx2]

If you're a bird, I would appreciate the thought, but from the perspective of a typical pedestrian, I'd rather not see towers of fans in my city core...it's another NIMBY. This is not to say that your idea has no merit...your idea has merit. It's just not economically feasible in the way you added it up. Most real estate owners would look for the greatest price to sell...power plants are looking for the cheapest possible means...and since they have to build power grids anyway, they can locate their power planst ANYWHERE on that grid. So they look for the cheapest scrap of land...not the place where vertical structures are necessary. And it would be odd to hike through a desert and come upon a 50 story windmill in the middle of nowhere...

mx2.5

[gaetanomarano]

[gaetanomarano]

[alexneverhurts]

Mercy.
This gentleman just proposed some new idea of clean power plant, not to install them onto your apartments. Besides, vertical multi-fan grids do have the advantage to catch more wind power and low design requirement for each fan (compared to those huge and technically challenging ones), but meanwhile, it may suffer from its structural stability (chance of survival in strong winds) and more important: the difficulty of maintenance. Noise won't be a problem here since it is still unproven if the total noise coming from multiple small fans is bigger or smaller than a single huge fan with equal power generation rate. Moreover, this power plants are supposed to be set up in open fields with no buildings where the wind is strong, and no one will care about its noise since there's no one there.
My opinion is: distributed micro system seems to become the trend of future, but the pros and cons of your innovative design are still in balance and I can't see a strong reason to replace the existing ones.

[atmaweapon]

So much heated discussion… and yet the original proposed idea is simply not going to work because it is non-sense aerodynamically. With out getting into long and arduous details, wind generators are not propellers in reverse, they are large not to make a statement, but because the forces necessary to mobilize the electromagnetic force (emf) are very large. A long catchment area increases the wind pressure mobilizing the generator as well as increasing its effectiveness by means of a larger moment arm. Design of rotor blades is balancing act. If a set of rotor blades are too “stiff” the wind will just flow around it and if the pitch is to low the same thing will happen.

Also there is the problem of clustering generators which is generally a bad a idea since neighboring mills rob energy from each other in the form of increasing turbulence of to the adjacent mills. In wind farms, the layout of assemblies is chosen to optimize between wind mill density and possible cannibalization

… And the list could keep going. Aerodynamics is a very complicated science, very sensitive to many variables.

In short, if such building was built, aerodynamically it would be a large chain link fence.

[alexneverhurts]