Wind Turbine Power Output Assessment in Built Environment

Akira Nishimura, Takuya Ito, Junsuke Murata, Toshitake Ando, Yasunari Kamada, Masafumi Hirota, Mohan Kolhe

1Division of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Mie University, Tsu, Japan.
Division of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Mie University, Tsu, Japan.
School of Energy & Resources, University of College London, Adelaide, Australia..

DOI: 10.4236/sgre.2013.41001                

Abstract

In future planning of the city, it is very important to consider the proper intelligent integration of renewable energy sources into the built environment for developing smart cities. Analysis of the wind velocity profile in the built environment is very important for finding out the energy content in the wind and also to analyze the performance of wind turbines in the built environment. In this study, building topologies of smart city are investigated for finding out the wind velocity profile and the wind turbine power output in the built environment. The wind velocity distribution across buildings is numerically simulated by using commercial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software CFD-ACE+. Wind turbine power output is estimated by using the power curve of real commercial wind turbine and wind velocity distribution simulated by CFD software. It has been observed that the wind is accelerated in the intervening space between the buildings irrespective of distance between the walls of adjacent buildings under the condition, which are investigated in this study. The wind is accelerated across buildings, and is reduced rapidly after blowing through buildings, and recovered gradually. Since the wind is accelerated in the intervening space between buildings and reduced in the area at the back of buildings, a wind turbine should be installed at the area at the back of the buildings and located on center between the buildings. In this work, it is observed that size dimensions and layout of the building are effective in realizing a smart city for utilizing renewable energy such as wind turbine in the built environment.

Keywords

Wind Turbine; Wind Energy in Built Environment; Wind Velocity Distribution across Buildings; Urban Wind Resource Assessment

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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