Performance assessment of a special Double Skin Facade system for wind energy harvesting and a case study

The increasing global concern about climate change and energy crisis has necessitated the development of techniques to reach and exploit renewable energy in unexplored regions. As such, decentralized small-scale wind energy harvesting in urban environments has gained momentum in recent years. In this study, a methodology has been developed to assess the performance of a special Double Skin Facade (DSF) system for wind energy generation using CFD simulations and local wind data. As a case study, a story-high corridor-type DSF system equipped with an array of wind turbines was integrated into a high-rise building, and its Annual Energy Production (AEP) within the context of four Australian cities was evaluated. The results showed that the free-stream wind speed can be amplified up to a maximum of 1.8 times inside the corridors of the DSF system. It was concluded that the benefit of the DSF system can be exploited the most in cities with strong bi-directional wind characteristics. Finally, it was shown that wind turbines inside the DSF system can annually generate up to 50% more energy at open terrain and 22%–45% more energy at dense urban and suburban terrains as compared with the same turbines in the free-stream condition.