Computational Analysis of VAWT Micro Wind Farm Potential for Urban Rooftops

Abstract

Renewable energy resources are promising in power generation due to their sustainability aspect and environment friendliness as they are means of pollution free power production.  Wind energy is utilized for power production with the help of wind turbines. The offshore and onshore windfarms consisting of horizontal axis wind turbines are major contributors in the wind energy. However, this type of turbine is not domestically viable mainly due to limitations of directionality and noise. Vertical axis wind turbines do not have these constraints and may blend in the urban environments. In built environments, the wind flow is quite complex due to large scale effects and turbulence. In this paper, the academic building of a university is studied as a possible platform for harnessing the wind energy resources. This case study is performed on academic blocks of University of Gujrat. These building environments were modeled and analyzed with computational fluid dynamic software to model the wind behavior on the building roof top. These results show that there is potential in setting up micro windfarms for the academic environments. The simulation for single building showed a potential for 61.8kW whereas this potential decreased substantially when terrain effects are considered using the circular arrangement for the simulation.