Numerical assessments of wind power potential and installation arrangements in realistic highly urbanized areas

Abstract

Various wind resource assessment (WRA) methods have been applied to explore the feasibility of installing wind turbines for urban wind energy harvest. Nevertheless, there are only limited computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies available to consider WRA around high-rise buildings in realistic urbanized areas. This paper presents a numerical assessment of urban wind energy potential, specifically pursuing to overcome the limitations of former studies by addressing the following points: i) conducting a large-scale wind power estimation by employing the meticulous topography in realistic compact high-rise urban area; ii) validating CFD simulations with the on-site measurements in two seasons; iii) obtaining the annual mean wind speed, wind power density and turbulence intensity between the existing high-rise building features, including building geometry, roof geometry, presence or absence of upstream obstacles, arrangements of integrated building complex and parallel high-rise buildings; iv) investigating the local installation locations of wind turbines and the distances from rooftop sidewalls or lowest mounting heights above rooftops with high power densities and acceptable turbulence intensities for wind energy harvest. The results of this wind resource assessment suggest an effective strategy of turbine installation for implementing urban wind power potential in a realistic compact high-rise urban area.