Performance analysis of shrouded invelox wind collector in the built environment

Abstract

Shrouded wind turbines are emerging as a promising approach for integrating wind energy into residential areas. A wind turbine’s shrouding plays a key role in strengthening the wind speed in low-wind areas, thereby maximizing power generation. The wind speed is improved by various novel geometries, airfoils, and positioning of the turbines at various locations. In this research, further improvement in wind speed is attained by optimizing the shrouded profile using the Taguchi approach. A modified INVELOX is attached at the exit of the shroud for harnessing wind power at multi-stages using the shrouded turbine. A high turbulence environment at two distinct locations was chosen based on the standards of the International Wind Agency to validate the performance of the shrouded INVELOX small-scale wind turbines. The wind turbulence characteristics based on the urban atmospheric boundary layer inflow situation over the above locations are analyzed using computational fluid dynamics and validated with experimental results. The shrouded INVELOX increases the wind speed by 1.52 times the actual wind speed when located at low-rise buildings and increases by 1.68 times when located at the top of the tallest building. The shrouded INVELOX performs better in comparison with the shroud and INVELOX when operated separately.