Aerotecture & Solartecture: Bringing Renewables to Urban/Suburban Architecture

The Presentation will feature the work of Aerotecture International and others working in the cities and suburbs of the USA on bringing a whole new 'Cities FIRST' approach to renewable energy installations. 

Wind electric systems have been mostly a 'rural' paradigm due to the limited performance of propeller-type systems in suburbs and cities.

Propeller-type 'windmills' require open spaces with no turbulent or varying wind direction changes reducing their performance.  They are typically noisy, mounted 100s of feet on towers and quite prone to being knocked down in high wind storms.  None of these features allow them near high density living areas.  Wind 'farms' will now require billions of dollars to build new power lines connecting them to the urban markets where 'clean' electricity is needed most. 

Alternative modes of wind generation have arrived with the combination of 'super magnet' AC generators powered by Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) linked to battery-free gird-tie inverters.  Because most VAWTs spin slower than prop windmills, are quieter and can effectively take turbulent multi-directional winds typical in suburbs and cities, they are ascending in markets prohibitive to the installation of prop windmills.

VAWTs in some forms have lower vibrations than other wind generators and can be mounted on buildings. This is not a new idea.  Buckminster Fuller sketched a VAWT atop one of his tall building concepts in 1928, and had the data to show that it could produce 20% of the building's electric power when constructed. That was over 80 years ago!

When VAWTs and solar electric systems are combined on large flat urban/suburban rooftops the Megawatt scale clean ROOFTOP power plants becomes feasible.  In 2007, Google mounted 1.6 Megawatts of solar electricity on three buildings in California…  SOLARTECTURE had arrived… and without wind power!  Now AEROTECTURE joins SOLARTECTURE!

As the cost of rural systems that require massive power line expenses ‘stalls out’ the common sense of bringing clean power directly to its 'point-of-use' ON ROOFTOPS will predominate.  This Power Point will be 80% image and only 20% shown in type.