WIND TURBINES ( HAWT AND VAWT)

Introduction:

Renewable Energy generation in the Urban environment has been receiving an increased attention
over the recent years. Integrated Wind Turbines are an interesting option in this respect.

One of the untapped potentials to reduce harmful Carbon gas emissions is the electricity generated
through wind turbines. It is a good choice of renewable energy as it is cheaper in terms of installed
cost per kwh as compared to photovoltaic cells.

The concept of generating energy through winds has been used ever since 1000BC, when Wind mills
in Persia were used primarily to pump water and grind materials.

For a building mounted wind turbines to be successful in generating electricity, the average wind
speed should not be less that 5.5m/second. Because of this, the high rise buildings have the largest
potential for wind turbine integration when compared to low rise buildings..

There are generally 2 types of Wind Turbines

1. HAWT ( Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines) and

2. VAWT ( Vertical Axis wind turbines.

The Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) consist of blades, attached to rotor hub which moves
aroung a Horizontal Axis. This is attached to a gear box and generator which are stored inside the
Nacelle, which is located at the top of the tower. It also has a yaw mechanism to rotate the axis
according to the wind direction.

Fig 01. A typical HAWT Fig 02. Assembly of Nacelle.

The Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) rotates around a vertical axis. The Generator and the gear
box are placed at the base and not in the nacelle making maintenance easier. It does not require a
yaw mechanism because it can harness the winds from all directios. VAWT are also more quiter than
HAWT.

Fig 03.

The building form is important to harness and drive the winds towards the turbine. Architect plays
an important role in sculpting the building to be based on concepts of aerodynamics. Wind flow
would depend upon the geometry of the building.

Bahrain Trade Center also makes use of the Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines to generate electricity.
But simulation results have shown that if the towers were built the otherway, it would have resulted
in almost 15% more energy.

Fig o4. Bahrain World Trade Center.

Similarly Strata SE 1, 148 meters tall, 43 storey building in London has three giant HAWT at the top
of the building to generate power.

Fig 05. Strata SE1 at London.

The Architect uses interesting expressions in his building COR multi use multi storey building by
providing HAWT in the outer skin of the tower in Miami to generate electricity.

Fig 06. COR building at Miami.

Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines can work effectively if it is pointed towards the winds, though it is
possible to turn it into wind direction with a wind vane (yaw) However the drive adapts slowly to the
changing direction because it must turn the entire turbine and propeller assembly, and thus gets
much lesser energy in this case. By contrast, Vertical Axis turbine works well regardless of the wind
direction making it better suited to urban areas with tall buildings and where wind turbulence is ever
changing. The vertical axis design allows it to operate on lower wind speeds than is possible with the
Horizontal Axis turbines.

Fig 07. VAWT mounted on the roof of the headquarter building ofEMSD , Hong Kong.