Aerotecture horizontal turbine installation

Industrial designer Bil Becker has created a wind column design intended to be grafted into urban architecture and help to make buildings more sustainable from a power perspective. These turbines aren’t ultra-efficient, the horizontal model is rated at 1.8kw per module in a 13 meter per second wind (30mph) and the vertical model is rated at 1kw in the same conditions. The turbines aren’t yet price competitive either running at $21,000 per module for horizontal and $15,000 for vertical turbines. But, they are very visually interesting and as volumes increase, price should drop.

The good news about these turbines is that even with the high required wind velocity, they’re likely to be successful. Why? Because urban environments are notorious for “making their own wind” – or rather, large vertical structures act as sails on wind currents not available at ground level and these winds sail through streets (urban canyons) at a pretty good clip. The installation environment plus the design element have the makings of an interesting success story.

We’ll watch Aerotecture with interest as the product comes to market.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under Wind.