HIDDEN WIND

Soon the hum of high-voltage electric towers will come from the electricity they produce, not just what they conduct. The Wind-it, a design by French architects
Nicola Delon and Julien Choppin and engineer Raphael Menard, inserts a vertical turbine inside the towers. Large wind farms need lots of land; Wind-it could be installed anywhere along the 157,000 miles of high-voltage  aboveground wires in the U.S. The turbines also plug right into the grid, saving the cost of stringing cable to remote areas. The inventors are currently looking for an industrial
partner to turn their scale model into a 330-foot-tall tower, which their computer simulations suggest could generate up to a megawatt of electricity—enough to power 400 homes. “The Midwest needs new power lines,” Menard says, “and
because the towers will cross high-wind fields, it could be perfect for Wind-it.”