Benidorm installs an anemometer at InTempo to find out the viability of self-sufficient buildings in terms of energy

Benidorm City Council has installed an anemometer on the roof of the InTempo building, the tallest skyscraper in the city, to find out the feasibility of building self-sufficient buildings in terms of energy. It is not the first device to be installed with these characteristics, although it is the one that does so at the highest altitude, exceeding just over 200 meters above the sea that this construction has.

The anemometer is a device used to measure wind speed and, in this case, it is the third one that is installed at different heights. The first of them is located almost at ground level; There is another one on the roof of a building and this third one is located in the InTempo building. All of them are in the Poniente area.

The installation of the device responds to a study that is being carried out jointly between the University of Alicante, TM Real Estate Group and the Benidorm City Council to find out the possibilities of building self-sufficient properties in energy matters. The device has already been placed by the TM company under an urban planning agreement with the council and is already receiving the first data.

The Councilor for Urban Planning, Lourdes Caselles, who visited the place where the new device has been located, explained that “we have been recording data for three years, 24 hours a day, every day of the week and it has already been extracted. the first conclusions and evaluations.”

In this sense, Benjamín Torres, from the Department of Civil Engineering of the UA, has pointed out that "with these data that we already have from previous measurements, we can advance that it is feasible to build a self-sufficient building in terms of energy in Benidorm."

Torres has also advanced some conclusions from the data obtained at this time, such as that “the wind usually blows parallel to the coastline or perpendicular to that line.” And also that “there is a lot of difference in wind speeds depending on whether it is measured at sea level or altitude.” A difference that he has estimated at “40% or more.” “If the wind is blowing on the ground at a speed of 40 km/h, on the InTempo roof it could be blowing at 90 km/h.

The higher the altitude, the greater the difference in speed there is,” he said.

Knowing the speed and direction of the wind at different heights also serves "to know how at what level and with what orientation to place the devices that will make our building save energy and these data have already told us that the difference between placing them at ground level or in height is very important” concluded Torres.