A retired wind turbine nacelle—the housing at the top of a turbine, not its blade or tower—has been turned into a compact home of about 376 square feet (35 square metres). Called the Nestle, the completed project uses the shell of a Vestas V80 turbine that operated for 20 years at Austria’s Gols wind farm. Vattenfall says the design meets building code and can be used for habitation or holidays; the project was presented at Dutch Design Week in October 2024.
How a wind turbine nacelle became a tiny house
The Nestle repurposes the nacelle, the upper turbine housing that contains components such as the generator and gearbox. Vattenfall and architecture studio Superuse developed the project around a retired Vestas V80 rated at 2 megawatts. The turbine was built for the Gols wind farm in Austria in 2005 and operated for 20 years.
Vattenfall describes the nacelle as 4 metres wide, 10 metres long and 3 metres high. New Atlas reports the resulting home’s area as approximately 376 square feet, or 35 square metres. The project team selected the V80 because Vattenfall says it was the first turbine model with a nacelle large enough to accommodate a tiny house; later models can have larger nacelles.
The turbine generated 73 gigawatt-hours over its service life. Vattenfall says that amount is enough to power more than 29,000 households for a year; that is the company’s comparison, not an independently recalculated estimate.
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What is inside the 376-square-foot home?
The interior is arranged as a small dwelling with a kitchen, bathroom and living area. New Atlas describes a wooden interior with a kitchenette and a combined sleeping and living space. The project team adapted the existing shell and fitted it with the systems needed for the proposed residential use.
Vattenfall says Superuse designed the house to meet building code. Blade-Made and Woodwave executed the project. Business in Wind, which decommissioned the wind farm, made the nacelle available; Vattenfall subsidiary Feenstra handled the electrical installation; and Reliving collaborated on the furnishings. These included sustainably produced and second-hand pieces, as well as a table made from Circuform material incorporating a recycled turbine blade.
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- An exterior electric-vehicle charging point.
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Other turbine components have different end-of-life routes. Vattenfall notes that parts such as foundations, towers, gearbox components and generators are often made from concrete or metal and can be recycled. Recycling steel still takes energy and produces emissions, but the company has not published a project-specific calculation of emissions avoided by converting this nacelle into a house, or a life-cycle comparison with recycling it.
Vattenfall’s Director of Innovation, Thomas Hjort, described the aim as finding ways to reuse turbine materials “as completely as possible” and make something new “with as few modifications as possible.” The Nestle is a demonstration of that approach; it does not establish that converting other nacelles into homes would be straightforward or environmentally preferable in every case.
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What the project does—and does not—show
The Nestle shows that one large turbine nacelle could be adapted as a code-compliant dwelling, according to Vattenfall, with domestic spaces and a collection of reported energy and ventilation systems. It is a completed exhibition build, not evidence of a standard home-building method.
- Cost: The reviewed project accounts do not state what the house cost to build.
- Energy autonomy: No measured annual output or evidence of off-grid operation is published.
- Long-term occupancy: The sources do not report long-term residential use or independent assessments of indoor air quality, insulation performance or service life.
- Availability: The project was shown at Dutch Design Week in October 2024. The event’s current listing gives dates for its 2026 edition, but does not confirm that this particular house is presently open to visitors, available to rent or for sale.
Superuse partner Jos de Krieger estimated that at least 10,000 nacelles from this generation are available around the world, with most not yet decommissioned. That is his estimate, quoted by Vattenfall, rather than a verified global inventory. He presented the Nestle as a complex reuse example that could point toward simpler applications; it is not proof that thousands of similar homes are planned or practical.
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Who built and supplied the project?
Vattenfall and Superuse are the named project partners. Business in Wind supplied the nacelle after decommissioning the Gols wind farm. Blade-Made and Woodwave executed the build, Feenstra installed the electrical system, and Reliving helped furnish the interior. Vattenfall presented the finished Nestle at Dutch Design Week in October 2024.
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