If you’ve tried to rent or buy a home in the last few years, you may have noticed there’s a severe housing shortage in the US and around the world. Millions of people need homes, and there aren’t nearly enough of them to go around. Plenty of creative, low-cost solutions have been proposed, from inflatable houses to 3D-printed houses, “foldable” houses, and houses that ship in kits to be assembled like furniture.
Now there’s another idea joining the fray, and it carries the added benefit of playing a role in the renewable energy transition: It’s a tiny house made from the nacelle of a decommissioned wind turbine.
The house, unveiled last month as part of Dutch Design Week, is a collaboration between Swedish power company Vattenfall and Dutch architecture firm Superuse Studios. Wind turbines typically have a 20-year lifespan, and Vattenfall is looking for novel ways to repurpose parts of its turbines. With the first generation of large-scale turbines now reaching the end of their useful life, there will be thousands of nacelles (not to mention blades, towers, and generators) in search of a new purpose.
Blades, towers, and generators are the parts of a wind turbine that most people are familiar with, but not so much the nacelle. The giant rectangular box sits at the top of the turbine’s tower and houses its gearbox, shafts, generator, and brake. It’s the beating heart of the turbine, where the blades’ rotation is converted into electricity.
Though it’s big enough to be a tiny house, this particular nacelle is on the small side (as far as nacelles go). It’s 10 feet tall by 13 feet wide by 33 feet long. The interior space of the home about 387 square feet, or the size of a small studio apartment or hotel room. The nacelle came from one of Vattenfall’s V80 turbines, which was installed at an Austrian wind farm in 2005 and has a production capacity of two megawatts. Turbine technology has come a long way since then; the largest ones in the world are approaching a production capacity of 15 megawatts.
Though there will be larger nacelles available, Superuse Studios intentionally chose a small one for its prototype. Their thinking was, if you can make a livable home in this small of a space, you can definitely make a livable home—and add more features—in a larger space; better to start small and grow than start big then downsize.
Though the house is small, its designers ensured it was fully compliant with Dutch building code and therefore suitable for habitation. It has a kitchen with a sink and a stove, a bathroom with a shower, a dining area, and a combined living/sleeping area. As you’d expect from a house made of recycled wind turbine parts, it’s also climate-friendly: Its electricity comes partly from rooftop solar panels, and it has a bidirectional charger for electric vehicles (meaning power from the house can charge the car or power from the car’s battery can be used in the house). There’s an electric heat pump for temperature control, and a solar heater for hot water.
Solar panels and wind turbines don’t last forever, and they use various raw and engineered materials. When the panels or turbines can’t produce power anymore, what’s to be done with all that concrete, copper, steel, silicon, glass, or aluminum? Finding purposeful ways to reuse or recycle these materials will be a crucial component of a successful transition away from fossil fuels.
“We are looking for innovative ways in which you can reuse materials from used turbines as completely as possible,” said Thomas Hjort, Vattenfall’s director of innovation, in a press release. “So making something new from them with as few modifications as possible. That saves raw materials, energy consumption and in this way we ensure that these materials are useful for many years after their first working life.”
As of right now, the nacelle tiny house is just a proof of concept; there are no plans to start producing more in the immediate future, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility eventually. Picture communities of these houses arranged in rows or circles, with communal spaces or parks in between. Using a larger nacelle, homes with one or two bedrooms could be designed, expanding the possibilities for inhabitants and giving purpose to more decommissioned turbines.
“At least ten thousand of this generation of nacelles are available, spread around the world,” said Jos de Krieger, a partner at Superuse Studios. “Most of them have yet to be decommissioned. This offers perspective and a challenge for owners and decommissioners. If such a complex structure as a house is possible, then numerous simpler solutions are also feasible and scalable.”
If 10,000-plus nacelles are available, that means 30,000-plus blades are available. What innovative use might designers and engineers find for them?
Image Credit: Vattenfall
