PLANS for a wind turbine on top of Brighton's new viewing tower are being dropped as it could make the structure sway in strong winds.

The Brighton i360 team has applied for planning permission to remove the wind turbine from the designs as the engineers have raised concerns that the turbine might cause the 162m tower to move in high winds.

John Roberts, the i360’s chief engineer, said: “In the very early designs of the tower, we had proposed including a wind turbine at the top, however detailed studies by our damping specialist showed that the wind turbine,with a mounting on the roof of the tower, would have stopped the tower damping system from working properly and the turbine itself would have been susceptible to damage.

"An important aspect of the tower design has been to ensure that it can withstand very high winds in the worst possible storms.

"To deal with these conditions there are damping systems mounted internally within the tower and the exterior of the tower is clad with perforated aluminium cladding, which disrupts the flow of the wind."

The wind turbine was expected to generate around 20% of the energy for the vertical cable car's ascent.

The plan now is to capturing energy on the vertical cable car descent and recover approximately 50% of the energy for the ascent, saving more energy than originally envisaged.

Plans to use rainwater captured on the i360 for use in the building is also being dropped.

Mr Roberts added: ?"We had originally hoped to harvest the rainwater but as the roof of our single storey beach building is also the boarding platform for the i360, unfortunately the water will be too dirty to be usable, even in the toilet system. "Therefore, the rainwater harvesting has had to come out of the design."

The visitor centre will incorporate a 400 seat restaurant, a shop, a children’s play zone, exhibition space, tea rooms and conference and event facilities.

Eleanor Harris?, chief executive of the i360, said they have found other ways of using Green energy for the tower, which is being built close to the West Pier site.

She said: “Electricity will be the only energy source used at the Brighton i360 site and it will come entirely from renewable energy sources. We will be signing up to a ‘green energy’ tariff, which guarantees that the energy we use has been produced, for example, at wind farms or hydroelectric plants."