Wind turbines are necessary for ensuring society’s sustainable future, but they still have a recycling problem. Decommissioned installations are destined for landfills in many cases, while the steel parts that actually make it to recycling facilities are only broken down after generating large amounts of (often dirty) greenhouse gas emissions. Two Dutch companies, however, recently proposed new ways to repurpose a wind turbine’s physically largest and most cumbersome pieces into tiny houses, boats, and more.
From October 19 to October 27 at Dutch Design Week 2024, Vattenfall and the design studio Superuse are showcasing a roughly 393-sq-ft home built inside a retired nacelle—the topmost, steel-encased part of a wind turbine containing its generating components such as the generator itself, gearbox, brake train, and drive mechanisms. After hollowing the nacelle of its original internal parts, the team used the casing for a prototype that now features a living space, bathroom, and kitchen with amenities like solar-powered electricity and water heating, as well as a heat pump instead of encasing turbine parts.
“We are looking for innovative ways in which you can reuse materials from used turbines… [which necessitates] making something new from them with as few modifications as possible,” Thomas Hjort, Vattenfall’s director of innovation, said in a statement. “That saves raw materials [and] energy consumption, and in this way we ensure that these materials are useful for many years after their first working life.”
Superuse didn’t take the easiest route to the new house. The team—with help from sustainable designing firms Blade-Made and Woodwave—reportedly picked the smallest possible nacelle to construct a building code-compliant dwelling instead of selecting a larger, modern…
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