Wind Tunnels

I know this is not a new idea, to harvest wind energy within tunnels. I had seen small vertical wind turbines that generate electricity at the bus stop from the wind of the buses. This effect is much more pronounced in closed tunnels compared to open air installations. The developed countries have tunnels totaling thousands of kilometers. However, the electricity produced within them is almost zero. The reason is that; solution is not simple requiring new technologies and careful analysis in each case.

The wind turbines for the tunnels should have the following features:

- They should be unobstructive. The tunnels have emergency paths for evacuation and those spaces should not be blocked by the wind turbines. I propose them to be placed on the ceiling  of the tunnels. This design can be implemented in metro tunnels where there is no exhaust gas emission and the tunnels do not require huge air circulation. Even then only part of the tunnels can be used for turbine installations.

- The accessibility in tunnels is limited. Therefore, the turbines should require low maintenance not to disturb the traffic inside.

As a conclusion, there are many opportunities for renewable energy generation. However, most of them require new technologies to be developed and manufactured in large scales. This can be overcome by big firms that are vertically and horizontally integrated.