Numerical and experimental analysis of smart urban wind turbines

The EU’s climate goals necessitate all the EU countries to have at least a 32% share of renewable energy consumption by 2030. Achieving this requires energy harvesting from all the renewables in potential locations. Wind energy is the largest contributor among the renewables throughout the EU with a share of 44.2%. Among the potential locations for wind energy harvesting, urban areas, although very promising in terms of providing a local energy source, are not yet well exploited. The urban environment is a complex environment with high turbulence and frequent changes in wind direction. Due to such large variations in the operating conditions and the strong operational-dependency of the wind turbine’s power performance, the urban wind energy has not yet been successful, mainly because the existing turbines have been designed for rather constant operating conditions and their performance is not amenable to the varying urban conditions. This research project aims to develop further insights to realize a novel concept of smart urban wind turbines that can actively adapt to the variations in the urban conditions in order to maintain their optimal power performance throughout a wide range of operating conditions. This would significantly enhance the efficiency of urban wind turbines and could render them a major contributor to the renewable energy production. The objectives of this work are to be achieved using the state-of-theart experimental and numerical methods.