Friday
Aug022013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The Strata
Aug 2, 2013 Greens 
I recently came across an image of the Strata, a skyscraper in south London with built in wind turbines.
Now wind turbines are gobsmackingly inefficient - we all know that - but the idea that you would make them still less efficient by preventing them from swinging round to face into the wind seems almost to defy belief.
To make things worse, it seems that the noise they generate has led to their being switched off most of the time.
Still, it will stand as a monument to the idiocy of environmentalists.
Reader Comments (60)
The non functioning building, a perfect response to the non existent anthropocene.;
Fascinating. When I first arrived in London in 1982 I lived walking distance from the Elephant & Castle. Although some if the massive tower blocks surrounding it then have been, or are being, demolished it still has its fair share of 'sink' estates compared to most of inner-city London, the occupants of which will no doubt be delighted to see in symbolic form on the skyline why their electricity costs so much.
I expect that our friends at Greenpreach and Fiends of the Earth were enthusiastic about this 'forward-thinking' concept when it was launched. And if so, I wonder what they would say about it now?
Time to go digging. ..
Resident Comment:
heh :-)
Oh the insanity gets better than that (basically greenwash, by the way). From an article in Der Spiegel today:
UGH. I heartily agree with the "worst form of greenwashing" comment quoted at the Urban75.org piece linked above:
I wouldn't be surprised if it made money somehow even when turned off. There's probably some subsidy that kicks in for having wind turbines even if they are not in operation.
Aug 2, 2013 at 1:00 PM | Skiphil
Is a skyscraper really greedy? How do the total energy sums stack up against 10 miles of urban sprawl?
Yesterday:
We know that the load factor for offshore wind over a 15 years period is about 0.3 so the net average output will be just ~ 90MW (Danish experience). In addition backup fossil fuel power will be needed when there is no wind (about 3 days/month). Total energy generated per year is then around 570 GWh. The market value of this energy (£50/MWh) is £28.5M. However the subsidy DECC has agreed (on our behalf) for off-shore wind farms adds a further £58M to Centrica's coffers. This of course is all paid for by us the British public.
So the net return on investment is a guaranteed 8.65% ! Not bad when you can borrow at <4% .
The real problem with wind (apart from ruining our countryside and coastline) is that to offset lull periods Gas plants have to be run in stop-go mode. This problem is exactly analogous to the drop in fuel efficiency by continuously accelerating and braking your while driving. This hidden extra cost is estimated at a further £60 per MWh which is shifted to gas costs although actually caused by the wind madness.
Future generations will look back on this bandwagon in the same way that we now look back on the 60's town planners who ruined our historic town centres !
There's a block of flats in Forest Road, Walthamstow with similar stupid whirly-thingies on the roof - which couldn't possibly power more than one resident's kettle - and are stationary most of the time anyway...
One day, soon, the architect will pass and say to him/herself: 'What was I thinking..?'
Re the Nick Clegg story - strange how these 'opening ceremonies' are timed for when there actually is some wind (ditto the PM launching The London Array) - because if the developers got it wrong the enthusiastic politician would be staring out to sea at a load of stationary turbines...
I'll put money on it, that those turbines significantly increased (was maybe even the deciding factor) in that monstrosity obtaining Planning Permission, based upon the presumption of its enhanced 'green' credentials.
"To make things worse, it seems that the noise they generate has led to their being switched off most of the time." - Perhaps they should add upstream & downstream attenuation? Guaranteed to reduce noise levels, but sadly will reduce output too. /sarc
A says-
"I wouldn't be surprised if it made money somehow even when turned off. There's probably some subsidy that kicks in for having wind turbines even if they are not in operation."
I wouldn't be surprised to read that the building is classified as a wind turbine to reduce property taxes.
From Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
which translates roughly to
Clive Best,
On the subject of wind income have you see this website: variablepitch.co.uk ? It appears to be collating data on wind and other energy outputs and incomes. As an example this is the page for the London Array.
sherlock1,
A funny thing with the London Array - Dave opened it in early July and a day or so later the UK was largely becalmed for the rest of the month.
At Gridwatch you can see the relative flat lining of wind output for July on the monthly Hydro/Pumped/Wind/Bio.chart. Wind output is now starting to pick up so I guess mother Earth prefers Nick.
Mt Everest is about 5.5 miles (29,029 feet) high. It must be a real doddle to climb, if you don't accept the difference between vertical and horizontal. Rob Burton, why don't you "do" Everest in about two hours, just to demonstrate there's no difference in energy requirement between going up and going along?
Come on, you other lemmings -- the race is now on!
I am amused by the ever-spinning turbine of "Tesco Freezer" which you will encounter, as I have recently often done, roughly where the M1 joins the M6. No matter the prevailing climatic conditions, amply evidenced by both trees and contiguous turbines, the Tesco Freezer turbine, like
Old Man River, just keeps rolling on. And on and on.
Interestingly, this building won the not so prestigious "Carbuncle Cup" in 2010.
Presumably this was because it had three enormous carbuncles proclaiming its status.
The carbuncle Cup was created in response to a comment made by the Prince of Wales during his "I hate modern architecture" phase.
I see from the linked Wiki note that the turbines are, at 19 kW each, "anticipated to produce 50MWh of electricity per year". Well, at least the writer knows the difference between MW and MWh but that's a load factor of ten per cent. And the sales brochure talking . . .
Allowing for downtime due to residents' complaints and routine maintenance, never mind that the cowling shelters them from much of the wind, suggests that they are demonstrably totally useless at generating electricity, let alone (a different thing) mitigating CO2 and other emissions.
My guess is that they consume more power than they generate. Still, I lived in Southwark for many years. Why am I not surprised?
Aug 2, 2013 at 2:27 PM | Hector Pascal
Eh? I walk up to my 10th floor flat in about 2 minutes. To walk ito the centre of London from my parents house on the edge is 17 miles according to Google and would probably take me over 4 hours. My point was some people might be too lazy to walk that and drive at which point you need to build more roads/infrastructure etc, than a concentrated population who travel far shorter distances using less energy in the process.
It's just another token "green" symbol. It's just like the token windmills they had at last year's Olympics. Useless, but good for the "green" credentials, but displaying how ignorant the designers are.
Eco-bling similar to supermarkets covering their roofs in micro-turbines. This form of idiocy is the result of an unhealthy obsession with carbon dioxide by people who don't understand the consequences of intermittent, low capacity factor generation.
I see this place, when I travel into London by railway. It's pretty obtrusive. It was described as the tallest entirely residential building in Britain, but there seems to be another one, in Vauxhall, claiming that title now.
One other thing about those wind turbines: they were only ever claimed to power the "public" areas of the "Razor". That would be lifts and lights, then, in the stairwells and the foyer.
You want to run a fridge, you planet-destroying fiend? Get your own wind farm (and your own back-up power station)!
Too bad that the nearby Battersea power station has been derelict, all these years.
It looks like a cartoon straight out of Fenbeagle blog.
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/
SH - drove past this one next to the M4 a week or so back:
****
Green Park, Reading
The most visible windmill in the world…?
Standing tall at the Reading junction of the M4 – this one’s probably seen by more people every day than any other windmill, anywhere.
Our Green Park turbine next to the M4
And that’s a big part of its job, and of our job, to get wind energy close to where people live and work, to give people the chance to see it for themselves. There’s no better way to dispel the myths of wind energy than to see one, and try to hear one, for yourself.
This is Reading’s first windmill, we’re sure it’s not the last. It’s been massively popular and started debates about how Reading might achieve 100% of its electricity from wind.
Putting large amounts green electricity into the Prudential’s GreenPark, this is the third of our Merchant Wind projects and the first in an office rather than factory setting. And it is a stunning setting.
If you drive the M4 past Reading you’ll have seen it for yourself. If not, it’s worth the detour.
****
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/our-green-electricity/from-the-wind/wind-parks-gallery/green-park-reading
Not a breath of wind judging from the tree tops but it was turning. Checking the University of Reading windspeed data for the date and time gives a 10m height wind speed of approx 2m/s.
*****
Green Park wind turbine
Wind turbine at Green Park.
The most visible feature of Green Park is an Enercon E-70[5] wind turbine, adjacent to the M4 motorway, and billed as the UK's most visible turbine. The blades are 33 m (108 ft) long, with a tower height of 85 m (279 ft). At a wind speed of 14 ms-1 (31 mph) the machine generates 2.05 MW of electricity (less for lower wind speeds), which is enough to power around 1,500 homes. It is owned and operated by Ecotricity and was completed in November 2005.[6] Between 2005 and 2010, it worked at 17% of its capacity, and it received £600,000 in public subsidies. In 2010, the subsidies received were thought to be worth more than the total amount of electricity that the turbine generated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Park_Business_Park
****
Old DM story here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1355419/UKs-useless-wind-turbine-Cost-130k-raise-electricity-worth-100k.html
****
"Ecotricity - Turning electricity bills into windmills" - Indeed!
It's not the only skyscraper(s) with wind turbines built in - the Bahrain World Trade Centre has 3, mounted on bridges between the two towers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_World_Trade_Center
I remember watching a documentary about their installation, and it wasn't without problems...
The London SE1 Community Website forum has a few threads devoted to the Strata turbines:
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/forum/read/1/168930/page=1
A recent thread is: "The wind turbine on the Strata - E&C."
taulpaulthepainter Thursday 21 March 2013 8.48pm:
Some responses:
Tolstoy Thursday 21 March 2013 9.52pm:
Ivanhoe Friday 22 March 2013 3.10pm:
Seamus Quinn Friday 22 March 2013 3.36pm:
stratan Saturday 23 March 2013 9.09am:
Eiggy Monday 25 March 2013 7.09pm:
Tolstoy Monday 25 March 2013 7.58pm:
taulpaulthepainter Monday 1 April 2013 7.43am:
inexile Monday 15 April 2013 3.04pm:
Brilliant local search Alex. Hilarious.
And never forget that our dear PM placed a wee wind turbine on the roof of his house,
We mustn't forget those school turbines that blow over or mince sea-gulls. They are a good lesson in health'n'safety and in caring for wildlife.
"Eh? I walk up to my 10th floor flat in about 2 minutes."
What about residents who aren't as fit as you. Naismith's Rule which fit hillwalkers use to estimate time for vertical ascent says 30m per 1000 feet. At 10 feet per storey climbing 10 floors would take a fit walker 3 minutes. As most of the population are not that fit going up 10 floors will take much longer than 3 minutes. Going up is far harder than going along. According to Naismith that 30min for 1000 feet up will get the same person 1.5 miles along. So going along is roughly 7 times easier than going up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naismith%27s_rule
Tried and tested tenement style 3 or 4 storey buildings are nearly as space efficient as multi storey flats and don't need high energy inputs to build or run lifts.
Peter Stroud
"And never forget that our dear PM placed a wee wind turbine on the roof of his house,"
You beat me to it. How sustainable was Dave's domestic wind turbine? How long was it up there before he took it down? The CONservative party's greenwash will come back to haunt them as the populace realise that they have been conned.
Hang on a minute. Maybe the whole building turns in the wind. That's going to annoy passing pedestrians.
nby
The offices adjacent to that turbine have been empty since they were built several years ago (unless someone's moved in recently). Which doesn't surprise me - looking out of the window and seeing those blades rotating would drive a man nuts after a while, I'd have thought.
Looks like the sort of thing that would go down well in Pyongyang.
It only needs a 50m wide granite-hewn, stern-jawed profile of Ed Davey to top it off.
Yes, the Strata at the Elephant and Castle has also been nick-named the Lipstick due to its shape.
I have passed it at least twice each week since it was completed in 2010 with much fanfare and I have never seen the turbines rotating. In 2010 there was much aclaim from the architects, developers and not least Southark Council, who all were proud to loudly proclaim their green credentials. I seem to remember a Southark councillor made a video where she was very happy to associate herself with such a green venture.
I believe the turbines were supposed to produce 8% of the power for the building and I also heard that when the turbines were operated, life in the top of the building (possibly the penthouses) became intolerable. Hence the static turbines.
I found to try and get an explanation from Southark Council or the developers etc. ends in a brick wall. it would be interesting to get to the bottom of this failure. Not so much Elephant & Castle but more like a white elephant.
The energy comparison between a flat in a skyscraper and individual homes is a no-brainer - the skyscraper wins hands down! I see the energy usage for my 200-unit (22-floor) building and on a per unit basis it is around 40% of the average residential home across the whole city. That includes elevators and 24-hour lighting in three garage levels and all corridors, as well as air conditioning in the summer.
Calling these "energy-hungry" simply shows the bias of the commentator. Not everyone wants live/work in a large building, but just because you don't like them doesn't give you the right make stuff up about them.
@Rob Potter
good point about the need to make an accurate comparison of energy use between tall buildings and more horizontal development.
The details might be trickier than simply comparing energy per dwelling (or commercial) "unit" though.
One would need to compare square footage and also energy used for materials, construction, ongoing services, etc.
However, I will suppose that it seems likely that tall buildings will compare well in energy terms, perhaps even with major advantages, since there are such obvious efficiencies compared to more scattered homes/offices.
For some additional info se:
http://msayear2stratatower.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/the-sustainability-of-strata-se1-from-a-technical-point-of-view/
In short
1.5M£
3 x 19kW 5 blade turbines with additional noise/vibration measures, expected 50MWh/year
Disabled 2300-0700 for noise (probably more or in disrepair, those gearboxes are a pain)
Can be used for ... a Brittish remake of Ghostbusters or King Kong?
Alex Cull @ Aug 2, 2013 at 6:26 PM
Good work. That is how the building actually functions.
BFLS (formerly Hamiltons). Bad work. You will be known as wannabe trendy failures. Like the 1960s Brutalist imitators of modern architecture.
If there's a £50 fine for dropping a fag-end how much are you fined for littering London with a concrete fail-dump?
A fitting monument to the age we live in.
This is so funny. A true monument to all that makes up the AGW madness.
This post from above is worth re-posting. It is brilliant on multiple levels:
"From Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Wer baut auf Wind, baut auf Satans Erbarmen!
which translates roughly to
He who trusts the wind, trusts Satan's mercy!
Aug 2, 2013 at 2:11 PM | Unregistered Commenter Bernd Felsche"
Good job, Bernd Felsche.
"However, I will suppose that it seems likely that tall buildings will compare well in energy terms, perhaps even with major advantages, since there are such obvious efficiencies compared to more scattered homes/offices"
The requirements of homes and offices are entirely different. Whatever may be the case for offices, I don't see any 'obvious efficiencies' for tall buildings as homes (like the Strata building). Tall residential buildings economise on the 'footprint' of land use, but not by very much (since blocks of flats are usually surrounded by open areas), and in every other respect they use more resources than comparable low-rise developments. A large proportion of a tower block is occupied by service areas (like lifts, passageways, and emergency staircases) which are unnecessary in low-rise housing.
off topic WUWT has a new poll up https://t.co/EBGqrL7J1u spread it to the doomsday cult sites if you happen to swing by them.
They look like Gore's chakras.
"Mt Everest is about 5.5 miles (29,029 feet) high. It must be a real doddle to climb, if you don't accept the difference between vertical and horizontal. Rob Burton, why don't you "do" Everest in about two hours, just to demonstrate there's no difference in energy requirement between going up and going along?" --Hector Pascal
Your analogy is just silly, Hect. The major energy expense for office or residential space is heating and cooling. Elevators consume about 1/10th as much energy per month as the average apartment dweller's fridge. Elevator electricity use is trivial compared to the energy savings (for heating & cooling) from reduced exterior wall area per cubic foot of dwelling space. You're obviously not an engineer or haven't figured out Google search yet.
http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-much-energy-does-elevator-use.html
Do the turbines face into the prevailing wind? Was the entire building designed to face into the prevailing wind?
The energy comparison between a flat in a skyscraper and individual homes is a no-brainer - the skyscraper wins hands down! I see the energy usage for my 200-unit (22-floor) building and on a per unit basis it is around 40% of the average residential home across the whole city. That includes elevators and 24-hour lighting in three garage levels and all corridors, as well as air conditioning in the summer.
Plus the added energy efficiency of placing people much closer to their place of work.
A large proportion of a tower block is occupied by service areas (like lifts, passageways, and emergency staircases) which are unnecessary in low-rise housing.
Actually most British houses have stairs, taking up a large quantity of space.
In any case, who cares? A tall building is much cheaper to build per square metre, so a bit of "wasted" space is no issue.
There's no doubt that high-rises are the most cost efficient way to live, both in terms of building and in energy. That's why most people in the rich world live in one. That the British have a phobia about them says more about their neuroses than it does about the cost benefits.
That said, it is only true up to a certain height. Above a certain point the lifts do become an issue, and the costs rise proportionately too. A building the height of Everest would not be inefficient.
(Incidentally Hector, climbing the height of Everest is no major deal in itself. You can climb two mountains half that height in four days (say Mont Blanc) in sneakers if the weather is nice. What is an issue with really tall mountains is the cold and lack of oxygen.)
@ lurker
Thanks for reposting Bernd Felsche's comment.
On an earlier comment skim I had mis-read it as 'Santa's mercy'.
Makes so much more sense now :-)
Shouldn't it be "Stratum"?