Oregon Public Broadcasting

A team of Portland architects, engineers, and builders has now erected what’s believed to be the first production-scale set of urban wind turbines in the country.

They won’t supply a whole lot of electricity. But as Rob Manning reports, the turbines’ significance lies in we can learn from them.

The project at Southwest 12th and Washington is certainly a new approach to wind energy.

Yes, companies have been putting big turbines up all over the western countryside for years. But putting the big metal masts on buildings is new territory.

John Breshears is a principal with Zimmer Gunsul Frasca – ZGF – architects.

John Breshears: “It’s sort of comical, the little diagram that they send for how you raise your mast once it’s in place – you put a little sort of a pole that’s called a ‘gin pole’ that’s vertical to the mast. You attach a cable to the bumper of your pickup truck, and you drive away, and raise the mast up, right? We just couldn’t figure out how to get the pickup on the roof here.”

The solution for the Portland rooftop wound up being decidedly low-tech: a guy in an orange vest and hard hat winds a handcrank, and slowly pulls the turbine from flat on the ground to straight up in the air.

John Breshears: “And yeah, it’s just a manual winch.”

But architects and developers behind the project insist that years of research by some of the smartest people in renewable energy have guided this project.

A Dutch wind expert advised the architects on where exactly to position the turbines. Another architect with ZGF, Craig Briscoe, says his firm also heard from Tom Zambrano – one of the leading designers of a human-powered airplane that crossed the English Channel.

Craig Briscoe: “We sort of fell out of our chairs at who we were talking to. We said ‘yes, please talk to us - tell us what you know.’ And Tom and his colleague, Tyler MacCready came up and proposed this wind tunnel study.”

Backers say that a great deal of research went into the rooftop turbines, and a lot of useful data is expected to come out of them. That notion helped snare state tax credits to fund the project.

ZBF architect, John Breshears says wind energy advocates from New York to California are keen to learn from Portland.

John Breshears: “We’ve been talking with the director of the urban wind task force for the city of San Francisco who’s very interested in creating a micro-scale wind resource map for every building corner, every street corner and intersection, and every building top for the entire city of San Francisco. So you could go into very precise detail and locate the absolute best building location for your wind turbine.”

Advocates say it’s a coup for Portland, as well, to have the first set of these urban wind turbines.

Damin Tarlow with the renewable developer, Gerding Edlen, says they’ll become a symbol of Portland’s green ethic.

Damin Tarlow: “It will be a striking scene, both from the rooftop deck, here, and really from any vantage point here in Portland. And yes, I do believe the Blazers will make the Finals, and yes, I do believe they will show a picture of this when it happens.”