RTKL Collaborates on Urban Wind Study

CBE was pleased to welcome RTKL Associates back to the consortium in Fall 2011. RTKL offers a range of services, from planning, architecture, and interior architecture, to MEP, structural engineering, and landscape architecture. They have 12 offices in North America and abroad, with a staff of more than 1,000 professionals.

Rendering of the Venturi Effect Turbine Array (VETA) as 

envisioned for downtown Chicago. Image: RTKL.

We were contacted by three architects with the firm who had won an in-house competition for an innovative proposal to place wind turbines in “urban canyons” in locations such downtown Chicago. The proposal, the Venturi Effect Turbine Array (VETA), was awarded research funding from RTKL’s parent company, Arcadis, to study the proposal’s technical and economic feasibility. The project team came to UC Berkeley last November to conduct a series of tests in CBE’s wind tunnel facility, using a model of Chicago’s central business district to evaluate the energy potential of such a site. Graduate students from the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative also contributed to the study, providing a report on regulatory, climatic, and economic aspects of the VETA system in selected cities around the globe.