According to theNew York Times , wind turbine are all the rage in New York City . We decided to find out for ourselves what all the buzz — or whoosh?—was about . So we met with wind turbine makerUGEand its mechanically skillful railroad engineer , Darius Salgo , who was kind enough to show us around the newly - installed wind turbines on top of one NYC high - rise .
Three of UGE ’s vertical axis steer turbine were recently installed atop the freshly - built Pearson Apartment Building , in Long Island City , Queens . My first question : Why vertical axis turbines ? It turn out that they ’re much better at catching turbulent winds — the form you ’d find in a metropolis — than their well known horizontal bloc cousin-german . And why three ? That , on the other hand , was a purely esthetic choice .
You ca n’t set up these turbines just anywhere . UGE had to evaluate the country to regain out if it would even be deserving it , efficiency - wise , to ramp up them here — since this is the high construction on the bound of a comparatively low chemical group of buildings .
There ’s been plenty of controversy about whether it ’s even worth build turbine on top of construction , due to the scummy monetary value - to - zip - output proportion . Still , the turbines atop the Pearson building will grow enough energy to cover the building ’s cost in mutual room kindling .
The blade of the turbines are like to an aeroplane wing in design . They only require the breaking wind to get it conk — after that , the turbines will wield a relatively constant speed .
The turbines eat forthwith into grid when they ’re turned on , and that energy father will cancel the utility costs of the building each month . For now , each is locked in place until the detail with the big businessman companionship get tidy up out .
Underneath the turbines , in the mechanical room , the energy feeds into a serial publication of part design to inflect it . The three turbines correlate to three stations : The first stop consonant is the jazz regulator loge . This boxful analyzes how tight the turbines are spinning and thus the amount of energy coming off the turbine — and then decides how much is too much .
If they ’re grow too much energy , the excess gets released through a recreation onus which is just a massive resistor that turn the extra energy into drive out rut . Then it applies a magnetic military unit onto the turbines themselves for make them spin at a slower speed .
The achievable energy is institutionalise to an inverter which relay it to the grid . In between all these components is a little loge made by UGE — this is a power monitoring system that appropriate the individual turbine to be monitored via the WWW . The building management will be using those to keep an eye on what they ’re getting out of each machine .
The turbines are , without a doubt , very typical . They employ some gravid technology that a unequaled neck of the woods like Long Island City could use to initiate the micro - grid movement .
So while questions stay about whether three turbine are enough to really make a pregnant impact on vigor utilisation , one thing is for sure : They ’re putting renewable energy in front of M of New Yorkers who might not be thinking about it otherwise .
Energynew yorkwind turbines
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