I recently read Aaron Betsky’s book on reuse in architecture, and enjoyed pursuing the idea across the internet. One project that caught my eye isn’t reusing a building per se, but reusing decommissioned wind turbines.
Swedish energy giant Vattenfall is a major installer of wind power, and it has been moving towards a circular economy approach to its technology. The shift to renewable energy at scale creates a new waste problem a couple of decades behind it – what to do with decommissioned clean tech at the end of its useful life?
Contrary to some media reporting, it is entirely possible to deal responsibly with old wind turbines and there’s nothing inevitable about them being dumped. They can be sold on second hand, as they often have life left in them after big commercial operators are done with them. They can be ground down to materials, or you can reuse them creatively.
Vattenfall recently tasked some designers with reusing the parts from a decommissioned wind farm, and one of the ideas was this one: creating a small home in a turbine nacelle. That’s the boxy bit at the top of the mast, on the other side of the blades. It hosts all sorts of machinery, and once that’s all been stripped out you have a very sturdy and weather-proof shell.
The Dutch architect Superuse selected the nacelle from a 2MW wind turbine that had spent the last twenty years 100 metres above an Austrian hillside. It’s 3.5 metres wide and 10 metres long, just big enough to make a tiny home. It’s fully compliant with building code regulations and features a hobbit-approved circular entrance.
There are solar panels on the roof and an air to air heat pump for heating, a little deck at the back and a custom wood interior. Tiny home living isn’t for everyone, but it’s easy to imagine a line of these on a holiday park or at a conference centre.
Given the craftsmanship involved, I suspect this wasn’t cheap and I don’t know if there’s a viable business here. If there was a steady supply of nacelles of a standard size, it’s possible that a company could lower the price of a fit out and make it work, but they would be competing in a busy market for cabins of this kind. It’s the sort of business that would really benefit from incentives for reuse.
Nacelles are only one part of a wind turbine of course, and it’s the blades that are a bigger challenge. They’re an awkward shape and I’ve seen a variety of unsatisfactory looking park benches and playgrounds made from old turbines. More positively, this multi-storey car park in Sweden uses old blades in its curtain walls.
Perhaps the most direct use for old blades is to lie them on their side and use them as sound barriers along highways and railway lines, currently being piloted in the Netherlands. You can use a lot of them this way, without needing to cut them up or grind them down. I may or may not get a chance to vacation in a wind turbine nacelle, but I expect to see glossy white sound barriers at some point and that might have to do.
