Bahrain’s Sustainable Architecture Helps Power Itself with Gigantic Wind Turbines

By: | January 27th, 2014

The Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC) has received multiple awards in the area of sustainability. This is Kingdom’s first intelligent building which features an array of sophisticated SMART features.

BWTC serves as a revolutionary model for innovation in green design as the first skyscraper in the world to integrate large-scale wind turbines within its building’s structure. The Bahrain World Trade Center is a 50-story complex which has the height of over 240 meter (787ft). It also ranks as the second-tallest building in Bahrain.

The towers are linked via three 30 meter sky bridges, each holding a 225kW wind turbine, totaling to 675 kW of wind power capacity. The three 29 meter (95 ft) diameter wind turbines are expected to provide around 10-15% of the power for both towers, representing about 3.5% of the total cost of the project.

Wing-like shape and curvature of the two towers act as a wing of an airplane and funnel sea breeze from the Arabian Gulf between them. They create a negative pressure zone behind the buildings that draws more air through the gap like the wings of an airplane. This suction effect raises wind speed by up to 30% at each of the rotors to boost electricity production.

BWTC stands as a twin tower complex in the city of Manama. The building offers spectacular views of the Arabian Gulf and Manama’s cityscape.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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