Today Metropolis Magazine officially announced the winner of their 2009 Next Generation prize! Titled Wind-it, the brilliant project aims to give our existing energy grid a much needed boost by installing wind turbines in ailing electrical transmission towers. The project is designed for France, but creators Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin, and Raphael Menard believe it could be integrated everywhere, from China’s Sichuan Province to the streets of New York City.
The French design team proposes inserting wind turbines into broken electrical towers, thereby turning the towers into wind energy powerhouses and providing an energy boost to a ready-made grid. Wind-it could also be placed in newly built electrical towers. The design, available in three sizes, could provide enough energy to power one room in a house or even 20 whole houses depending on size and wind speed. According to Delon, if a third of France’s electrical towers were outfitted with turbines, they could rival the energy production of two nuclear reactors–that’s 5% of the country’s total electrical demand.
The project comes at the right time for France, which hopes to expand its wind power capacity to five times the current level by 2020. “There are a lot of people who are against wind turbines because they say it disfigures the landscape,” Delon says. But the Wind-it nullifies that argument by adding wind power to structures that are a familiar part of landscapes everywhere.
+ Wind It
+ Metropolis Magazine Next Generation Design Competition
The concept is really appreciable. Saves tower, foundation and transmission line costs, however will have modification & installation costs. Grid availability is easy. Will be more usefull for developing countries. Supplements energy requirement globally there by securing environment.
I like it! Perfect combo of reuse and renew… wind energy stats and “state of the industry” if anyone’s interested in my blog post …http://tinyurl.com/pr4wvx..
On the face of it all, this looks like a brilliant concept… but…
@odyson “As the consequences of the removal of wind energy has need been proper studied, the effects may also be biologically damaging.”
– This seems to be an interesting concern something that had occurred to mi too. Its like constructing Dams disturbs the ecosystem of the river… so perhaps if wind energy is tapped on a very large scale then even this has the potential to disturb the system.
But I really doubt that any serious study will ever be done on this subject in time. Human beings have a habit of first committing mistakes and then trying to firefight.
@odyson “Nuclear fuels are the least damaging and most safe”
– This I am sorry I cannot agree with.
Virtually all the energy on Earth is from the sun.
wow!!!!! Wish I could get a VAWT here in Perth Aus.
Wow, what a great idea!
how does the removal of wind energy effect the natural world? this harvesting wind removes the energy needed to distribute seeds, chemical signals to which migratory birds navigate plus many more un-researched reactions.
wind generated power is very usable, but only to compliment a whole consortium of other ‘green’ methods. As the consequences of the removal of wind energy has need been proper studied, the effects may also be biologically damaging.
Nuclear fuels are the least damaging and most safe, but the use of many ‘environmentally sustainable’ methods would also benefit.
NB. James Lovelock recent book The revenge of Gaia, has a brilliant description on the problems and misguided opinions on nuclear power against green solutions, good book.