[at-l] Windmills on tall buildings

[Andrew Claus]

Before I hiked, I was an electrical power engineer and I occasionally worked with structural engineers and architects.  I worked on the early windfarms in San Diego County along the PCT in the early 1980s, as a power engineer with SDG&E, too.  When I walked though the Mojave in '04, I hitched a ride with a wind machine engineer, and he filled me in on the advances made in the 20 years since I had worked with them.  Power output had increased more than 10-fold.

Those things are huge now.  A building's structure and electrical system would have to be designed to carry the load.  They could not be retrofitted to an existing building, unfortunately.  What a great idea, though.  There are smaller machines, but they're probably not economical enough, yet.  Photovoltaics are getting more attention from architects, though power engineers have a harder time with the DC output, which has to be messily converted to AC to be sold.

I know I'm in the minority, but wind machines (and power lines, for that matter) don't bother me as much as they do most other hikers.  It's a hard-to-loose professional fascination, I guess.  I was frankly surprised at the opposition in the hiking community to a "green" source of energy.  But I understand many more of the factors after reading posts and listening to people.  It's great hikers are getting involved and being heard, and helping affect local decisions.

In my post-engineering hiker viewpoint, I think a good way to "tilt the windmills" is to reduce your electrical load.  Simple, like loosing weight by eating less, right?  

Thanks for your ear,

Garlic


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