TU Delft's Bucky Lab: Energy generation from fins waving in the breeze

07/09/2020 | Print view

This rendering gives a good idea of what the system will eventually look like as part of an actual facade. - © TU Delft / Bucky Lab — © TU Delft / Bucky Lab

This rendering gives a good idea of what the system will eventually look like as part of an actual facade.

This facade system was designed by the TU Delft master's degree facade students Daniella Naous, Divyae Mittal, Maximilian Mandat, Rahul Grover and Rutger Janssenas as part of the Bucky Lab – to be integrated into the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam.

The energy consumption of public buildings keeps on increasing. Although there is hope in looking forward to renewable sources of energy like wind power, it is not possible to utilise the potential of the wind present in dense urban areas.

Thus, the students decided to use the large vacant surface areas of facades to generate energy with developing Piezo technology. The energy production happens from what they call the Aerodynamic Sustainable Oscillating Piezo (EAS-O-Piezo) system by oscillating fins which in turn bend the piezo crystal. The modular design of the system will make it easy to mount and has a simple geometry.