Wind conditions and performance of small wind turbines in urban areas

One of the fastest growing renewable electricity technologies has been wind energy, in both large-scale wind farms as well as in smaller distributed and community wind applications. Small wind turbines have traditionally been designed for rural areas over open terrain as off-grid system. There has, however, been an increasing trend towards the installation of wind turbines in non-open terrain, such as in urban areas and in mountainous regions as on-grid system, where the turbulence levels are higher and wind speeds are lower. The design, installation and performance of small wind turbines in urban areas are areas lacking in guidelines and procedures, despite evidence of failure of small wind turbines at urban sites and concerns over reliability and safety. This book is designed to address this lack of guidelines and procedures and can be considered as an investigation in two distinct but related parts. Firstly, it is an investigation of aspects related to wind resource assessment in urban areas through both wind monitoring programs and computational flow simulation. Secondly, it is an investigation of the turbulence models currently used in the design standard.