London’s Strata Tower Design Incorporates Wind Turbines

A 43-story residential tower in south London’s Elephant & Castle neighborhood will receive eight percent of its power from three wind turbines  installed at the top of the structure.  The Strata Tower – nicknamed the Electric Razor – is being developed by Brookfield Europe and eventually will be home to 1,000 residents.

The Strata is a £13 million milestone in the £1.5 billion project to revitalize the Elephant and Castle area.  The Strata’s 408 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments range from £230,000 to £2.5 million, with the first residents expected to move in this summer.  As well as generating an estimated 50MWh annually, the turbines will earn approximately £16,000-£17,000 per year through the British government’s new feed-in-tariff, a payment per kilowatt-hour for electricity generated by a renewable resource.

Each turbine has 15 blades with a 9m-diameter rotor plane.  The wind turbines – which will meet energy demand for 33 two-bedroom apartments – were chosen because they had the best potential, given the building’s height and shape.  Although other buildings have wind turbines mounted on their roofs, the Strata Tower is the first to incorporate them into the original design.