Pearl River Tower is a skyscraper that is under construction at the junction of Jinsui Road/Zhujiang Avenue West, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, China. This is the architectural rendering of a building designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; it is planned to be 71 stories, 2.2 million square feet, and have a "net" zero-energy footprint.
According to Roger Frechette, director of MEP Sustainable Engineering at SOM, Chicago, the building's facade was designed "to accelerate the wind as it moved through the opening in the building." Power potential is the cube of wind velocity, and SOM initially estimated that the design would increase wind velocity to 1.5 times ambient wind speeds. Actually, models tested wind speeds of up to 2.5 times ambient wind speeds in some cases. In translation: the building design could generate power 15 times greater than a "freestanding" turbine.
Through sustainable design, countries can place themselves in a position to be less reliant on natural resource providing countries.Indeed, it is intended that the systems will generate more energy than operation of the building will use. |
