High Rise Wind Turbines

The higher you go, the more wind you are going to run into so long as you don't keep heading off into space. This simple idea has given rise to the concept of high rise wind turbines.

Wind tends to be elevation oriented. What does this mean? Well, consider sitting in a stadium for a football or baseball game. You can be sitting in your seats and feel no wind whatsoever. When you look up at the flags above the scoreboard, however, they can be blowing like they are in a hurricane. This is because the higher one goes, the more wind there tends to be.

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High rise buildings stand above those around them. How is that for an obvious statement?! Still, this presents these buildings with a unique relationship to the wind. They tend to be buffeted by strong winds because there is nothing to impede the wind from hitting them. What if you could capture the energy in that wind? You could create a significant amount of energy...all of it clean and free.

High rise wind turbines are an idea that is focused on just this concept. There are different approaches to the technology, but the most common approach is to put a set of turbines that are rather large on the roof of the high rise. The simple approach is just to put them on poles like residential turbines and let them spin. A better approach is to embed in them in the design style of the building so that they don't look so out of place. One building, for instance, placed gothic statute like pieces approximately 12 feet high around the roof like gargoyle structures with the mouths actually containing the wind turbines. The Bahrain World Trade Center actually looks like two sailboat sails connected by three booms. The booms have large wind turbines on them.

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Regardless of the style, the use of wind turbines on high rise buildings is becoming very popular. Not only are the buildings "greener", but the energy costs associated with the buildings are lower. The wind turbines tend to get consistent wind that high in the air and thus produce energy easily throughout the day and often through the night. This can cut the energy bill for a building by 10 to 30 percent depending on the size of the building and turbine system. Over the life of a high rise, that is a lot of money.

Designing buildings that are both greener and energy efficient is a big priority these days. High rise wind turbines are becoming a fundamental design element used by architects when meeting that goal.

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