Tiny Home: Giving Aging Wind Turbines New Purpose

[Photo: Jorrit Lousberg/Vattenfall]

These wind turbine tiny homes give a whole new meaning to downsizing.

Tiny homes have long served as a source of creative exploration among designers, from ultra-minimal concepts to affordable 3D-printed dwellings and all-electric, battery-powered models. But a Dutch prototype is stretching the bounds of an already innovative market by introducing a completely novel idea: A tiny home made out of an old wind turbine.

The prototype, which features around 387 square feet of interior space, is the product of a collaboration between the European renewable power company Vattenfall and the architecture collective Superuse Studios. It’s currently on public display for the first time at Dutch Design Week, which runs from October 19 to 27.

The turbine-turned-tiny house is also an experiment in material reuse that could become more critical as wind turbines across the globe reach the end of their life cycles.

A Vattenfall wind turbine in Zeewolde, Netherlands, ca. 2014.
[Photo: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg/Getty Images]

Extending the life of aging infrastructure

Vattenfall has a few near-future sustainability goals. In 2023, 87% of Vattenfall’s electricity production came from renewable sources. The company aims to close that gap and become fossil-free by 2040, and it’s also thinking about how to make its existing material usage more circular.

One major consideration for the company is its wind turbines, which typically have a lifespan of around 20 years. Once a turbine reaches the end of its utility, Vattenfall has to determine what will be done with its component materials.

[Photo: Jorrit Lousberg/Vattenfall]

That’s a tall order, considering that turbines typically stand at over 300 feet and include a nacelle (the control box that houses the generator, brakes, and other components) as well as three large blades. But the need to address that challenge is climbing. While there are no official decommissioning stats available, Vattenfall estimates that 5,000 wind turbines worldwide will need to be decommissioned annually over the next couple of years, as turbines across the globe begin to age out of their two-decade use window.

[Photo: Jorrit Lousberg/Vattenfall]

On a macro-level, that’s because the first boom of large-scale wind farming infrastructure is reaching the end of its life cycle. While the first electricity-generating wind turbine traces back to the late 19th century, large-scale wind farms have become much more commonplace over the past 30 years or so. In fact, global windpower grew from about 6,100 megawatts to 197,039 megawatts between 1996 and 2010. And that means that now is the time to “find better alternatives of making use of the resources that were developed, and making sure that we get the most out of them,” says Thomas Hjort, Vattenfall’s director of innovation.

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