Building Integrated Wind Turbines - Could We Build This Kind Of Thing Here In Cleveland???
Submitted by Charles Frost on Fri, 04/13/2007 - 06:48.
This isn't just some architects dream... here is a construction photo:
...and the finished product looks great!!!
From: http://www.bahrainwtc.com/
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beautiful building in Bahrain
That's very cool, Bill. Plop something like this down on a brownfield in Cleveland and we would be making a great contribution to our skyline.
Interestingly I read this quote today in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine: "it is no accident that the first Arab Gulf state to start running out of oil, Bahrain, is also the first Arab Gulf state to have held a free and fair election in which women could run and vote, the first Arab Gulf state to overhaul its labor laws to make more of its own people employable and the first Arab Gulf state to sign a free-trade agreement with America."
The article is worth a read since it will make it into so many readers hands this week.
The Power of Green by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
How many KW?
I checked their web site out and didn't see anything about the turbines... do you know how much power they generate?
In any case, why don't we have some plans for something like this for NEO?
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WIND TURBINES BETWEEN BINARY BUILDINGS - GOOD IDEA
Bill, very nice images. This is a great sustainable building idea – and especially feasible where the wind comes most of the time from one direction – as it does in Cleveland 65% of the time from the SSW. The turbines in the artist’s rendering appear to be gearless models (large diameter right behind base of blades at hub and no long nacelle) and look to be about the same size as the 600 kw Lagerway turbine in Toronto operated by the Wind Share Coop.
The fact that the turbines are corralled between two aerodynamically shaped buildings – in essence the turbines are “ducted” - will have perhaps a 2Xs multiplying effect on the amount of power the turbines can extract from the air flow (vs free air flow with a standard free standing turbine) because the air stream cannot “spill” around the tips of the blades and must instead pass in the “disc” through which the blades travel.
This is what the Cleveland Foundation and the Cuyahoga County energy “task force” ought to be encouraging rather than using our tax money to chase wet, untried, very complex and expensive Lake Erie Wind.
Imagine the difference a turbine would make
It is so funny... if ODOT, or Cuyahoga County, or Wolstein, or Stark, or any other NEO developer had ever added just one little wind turbine to their projects - a 1 KW pinwheel at the top of some building spire... hell, a green roof, on a Stark xurb-scape, for that matter... the world would have been running to their support. Instead, we have insipid design that in each and every case destroys more embodied energy or other ecological value than any high efficiency light bulbs or HVAC can ever recover, without any embedded energy intelligence - and all ugly!!! If there is ever a hint of green in any regional design it is in hindsight (more accurately, SPIN). It is astounding how clueless area developers and leaders are on not only the ecological disaster they have created for the world but good PR. Hello... THE WORLD WANTS GREEN! HOW HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND? Learn from our brothers and sisters in enlightenment in Bahrain, NEO-leaders.
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Landmarks, Getting on the Map, and Fung Shui
A few friends that know me well - and no my off-beat ideas and beliefs - know I have an entire theroy about another kind of energy loss and mis-use that I believe CONTRIBUTES to Clevelands (or more likely REPRESENTS) Cleveland continual slide and decline since the early part of the 20th Century. It is a city designed against itself. Think Fung Shui here.
I mean that literally.
The Burnham Plan has NOTHING to do with Public Square, the emotional and landmark heart of the city. City Hall is at the furtherest corner of the plan, at the foot of a non-descript, short, go no where street that bends off crookedly to the southwest. 9th Street, the financial corridor of the city, does well but then takes a SHARP dive right out to the lake. Back in the "old days", I remember being fascinated by all of the MANY tankers and skips, massive as any major building that literally ANCHORED the end of the pier, bring and taking, moving and distributing, raw materials, goods and wealth. And just when things were slow, at least Capt. Franks could hold down the fort. Now that is gone.
I.M.Pei may have tried - considering his East Asian background - to get the Rock Hall positioned directly at the base of the pier rather than off to the side. All that reflective glass and especially the power of that triangle, could have bounced the light and chi back to the city. Wonder what happened there.
NOW ...
Now imagine those twin turbines at the base of the 9th street pier, facing back towards the city. Pin Wheels and anything mirror like are considered major cures for Fung Shui displacement.
Okay, its just the ramblings of an old hippy crazy, but ... nothing else has "worked".
Besides, something like that would put Cleveland on the map. A heck of a lot better than that BS bridge ODOT is trying to ram down our throats. I didn't like ANY of the designs, even that guy that the PD claims is the best Bridge Designer in the world today.
HEY - as long as we're going to talk crazy, why not make the bridge piers the integrated turbines. Anythings better then those clothes pins ODOT and everybody else came up with.
KMaCK
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100% right
I agree with every thing you say here. Very well said.
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Kind Words
It is nice and heart warming to find nice words written here about a topic that has become a bit of madness/obsession/interest since I happened upon a talk by Jeff Buster and Martha Eakin at an astounding REI program a long thyme ago.... 2, maybe 3 years???
Those were a magical time, the people I met then are the left ventricle (sp?) of the heart of Cleveland.
I have run into a number of those (you) folks since, and we all share a common burden; we care about this city. Not "the politicians", or "the bureaucrats", or the "institutions", but we care about the city, and "we, the people" who ARE the city.
We may show up at many of the public venues, but more often we show up at the private group meetings like E4S, GEO, meetings at libraries, Midtown Brews, Meet the Bloggers, of wherever. We are impassioned.... about pollution, water quality, rescuing special places like Whiskey Island, wind, solar, whatever.....
I thank you all, and I am pleased to consider you my friends.... Sort of like a group of kids who (back in the days before all the organized "children's sports") used to get together on the grounds of the local elementary school or junior high to have a game of "pick-up" baseball or football. At those times we all worked ('kinda) well together and played ('kinda) well together, so we were "friends".
Without those games, we were just individual "kids". Those games made us a group of "neighborhood kids", and that has made all the difference (with apologies to the late, great Robert Frost).
'nite.
Well put... the Little Rascals
Stickball... 4Square... Kickball... ah to be a kid and find new friends and invent games and learn and explore together, without any protocol and preconceptions or judgments based in society. I like how you put this and love the idea we remain free to find new friends and explore new back lots and can care less what goes through the minds of the adults... the parents. Nice to have you in the sandbox!
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Bahrain WTC Wind Turbines Completed (From May 2008)
"The Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC) has completed the construction of the three wind turbines that will generate electricity between it's twin towers. The BWTC design blends maritime aesthetics with the functionality of traditional wind-towers. The buildings are the tallest in Manama and the turbines officially make it the world's first wind-powered mega structure. The three wind turbines are horizontally supported between the towers by three bridges weighing a substantial 65-tonnes each, and will provide 11-15% of the electricity needs of both towers.
The 29-metre diameter turbine blades took architects from Atkins over three year to develop. Tim Askew, Regional Managing Director for Atkins, states that the company’s goal is to “raise awareness of sustainability within the psyche of our architects and engineers. This project serves to highlight how with determination and willingness on behalf of responsive clients we can actually turn these ideas into reality."
From: http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/bahrain-wtc-wind-turbines/
Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDYeGaZunPY&e
By refusing to deal honorably with others, you dishonor yourself.