Dubai Tower to be Solar-Powered

Forget the kilometer-high Burj Dubai under construction in the Persian Gulf's fast-growing city-state. A British consortium is building something even wilder, which surely qualifies as the world's largest bona-fide gadget: The Time Residences tower, a solar powered skyscraper that will use the electricity thus generated to rotate through 360 degrees.

"We didn't want to build just another building or tower, we wanted to create something unique - a precious place to live - a genuine contender to be one of the great buildings in the world," said Tav Singh, director of Dubai Property Ring, the Dubai arm of UK-based property investors UK Property Group.

The completed tower will offer 200 expensive apartments for people who want to spend lots of money to screw up their circadian rhythym. Singh said they want to build many more such towers, with one for every time zone.

I was wondering why they don't use the solar power to reduce the tower's energy usage, rather than just rotate it. Then I read:

"Cooper said state of the art bearing systems at several points in the tower will allow a power plant to rotate the base of the tower at 5mm per second using only 21 electic kettles' worth of solar power."