Urban wind power systems aren’t new. Way back in the mid-70’s, the first rooftop windmill was installed on top of a NY City co-op building. The wind turbine generated enough electricity monthly - 200 kilowatt-hours - to power the building with enough electricity left over to deliver some to the Northeast power grid. So why didn’t urban wind generation catch on? For one thing, the technology was primitive compared to today’s. The early models were noisy and vibrated enough to be felt throughout the buildings. They looked like propellers on sticks to some people and weren’t aesthetically pleasing at all.

Things have certainly changed. When Chicago turned to Bil Becker, of Aerotecture International, http://www.aerotecture.com, he was able to provide the city with vertical-axis wind turbines that are almost beautiful. More like modern sculptures, these new rooftop turbines are able to generate electricity no matter the wind direction. Unlike horizontal-axis turbines, they can do that even when the wind is blowing with 100 mph gusts! Their price — under $4,000 and falling –make them accessible to the residential market also. Thanks to new design technology, vertical-axis turbines are almost no hazard to wildlife, they don’t vibrate at all and produce very little noise.

With very little fanfare, these rooftop arrays have multiplied at an increasing rate over the last decade, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and the industry is expanding exponentially. Phillipa Rogers, a spokesperson for Quiet Revolution, says, “We can’t make the turbines fast enough.” Company president, Phil Watkins, sees more than 40,000 turbines distributed by next fall. (http://www.plentymag.com/features/2007/09/a_mighty_wind.php)

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