Bahrain's turbines spin: consultant

The lead consultant on the Bahrain World Trade Center, Atkins, said they are struggling to convince the public that there is nothing wrong with the building’s iconic wind turbines.

The three turbines, each 29m in diameter, were tested and commissioned but have since rarely been seen turning.

"For whatever reason people think there is a problem with the turbines but there is nothing wrong with them," said Atkins project manager Peter Longstaff.

"The problem is that people think these turbines should be running 100% of the time but that's not the design intent."

Longstaff said there are several strict parameters within which the turbines will operate including the building's power demand and the direction, angle, velocity and speed of the wind.

These parameters have been further restricted because only 5% of the building is occupied while the remaining 95% of tenants are fitting out of their offices.

"The permissible wind speed would normally be between 4m and 18m per second but at the moment we've locked that off at 10m/s until such time as the energy demand picks up," said Longstaff.

"When the building is fully occupied the turbines will turn more because the parameters in which they can operate become bigger."

The turbines would also spin more frequently if the building could feed excess power back into the grid, something which Bahrain's Electricity Distribution Directorate (EDD) currently won't allow.

"That's why we have all these constraints, if we could get rid of excess we wouldn't have to limit how much power the turbines push out and they wouldn't be constantly stopping," Longstaff said. "In the long term we could leave the design as it is and just educate people as to why they aren't spinning all the time."

"Or we sell to the EDD the logical of dumping surplus back into the grid and show them the testimonies of companies from all over the world where it's done - that's the most desirable outcome."

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