HOME > NEWS & PRESS > NEWS ITEM The Continuing Allure of Rooftop WindShareNew York Times Green Inc Blog Four wind turbines, rising 45-feet above a 22-story building in downtown Portland, Ore., won’t produce a significant amount of power — but that’s fine with the architects who put them there. “This is more about generating knowledge than electricity,” said John Breshears of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, which developed the project atop Twelve West, a new, mixed-use tower in Portland’s West End. The turbines were turned on last week. “The more we learn the better we’re going to be at this.” Although they will produce just 1 percent of the building’s electricity needs, Mr. Breshears and his partner, Craig Briscoe, suggest that the turbines will provide much needed data on the efficacy of urban rooftop wind farming, which has generated a good deal of interest, but faces a number of challenges — from the prohibitive size and weight needed to generate cost-effective power, to annoying vibrations, generated by spinning blades, that can ripple through a building’s frame. (A rooftop wind “laboratory” was also launched at Boston’s Museum of Science earlier this summer.) “People think that in an urban setting you won’t be able to harness the wind in an effective fashion,” Mr. Briscoe said. “We think we’re going to be able to show otherwise.” Working with wind researchers, the architects used data from NASA and Google Earth to map weather patterns to determine how high the turbines needed to be and where to place them so they would have the greatest impact. They also worked with engineers to develop hinges that would allow the turbines to be lowered for maintenance. “We were concerned about the weight, which turned out not be a significant issue,” Mr. Breshears said, “and we were concerned about vibration.” To deal with the latter, the bottom portion of the masts are filled with sand, and the turbines themselves were installed on isolation mounts. Not everyone thinks its worth the effort or expense. Speaking to The Oregonian newspaper last week, Jerry Yudelson, a green building consultant who argued that money would be better spent on making urban buildings more efficient, called the turbines “kinetic sculptures.” “It’s just a gesture, and it’s fine if people want to make that gesture,” Mr. Yudelson told the newspaper. “To me, there’s a lot of ways to play the game. But the real game is to design a super-efficient, comfortable, healthy building.” The Portland architects, however, remain undeterred, pointing out they have designed an efficient building that they expect will receive two Platinum LEED certifications — for new construction and commercial interiors. “More than half the world’s population live in cities now,” said Mr. Briscoe. “We need to get a lot better about how we provide for those people.” |
