A wind fence developed by New York-based designer Joe Doucet is set to bring clean energy production into urban landscapes. The fence consists of vertical wind turbines, is modular, and, most importantly, is pleasing to the eye, making it more likely to be adopted in hotels, corporate buildings, and residential units.
This has been preventing wind energy from participating in distributed energy generation, much like solar panels can be installed on rooftops, in gardens, and now even on balconies. With the team at Airiva, a company he co-founded with energy industry veteran Jeff Stone, Doucet put 16 designs of vertical turbine blades through the motions to arrive at three final versions that made it to the wind tunnel testing.
In a standard setup, where eight helical blades are precisely arranged, the Wind Fence generates about 2,200 kilowatts of energy annually. From the output from a single unit, an average US household would need five Wind Fence units to remove its dependence on the grid completely. This might not sound too much until you realize that each unit measures nearly 14 feet by seven feet .