Energy and Buildings, Vol.142, 62-71, 2017
Preliminary assessment of the wind power resource around the thousand-meter scale megatall building
The next decades will be a golden period for the utilization of wind power in buildings. This paper assesses the wind power resource for constructing a thousand-meter scale megatall building in China. Considering there is no existing documentation of more detailed sources for upper level wind data, we elaborated on using the mesoscale meteorological model Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRFv3.4) to investigate the wind characteristics at different levels within the thousand-meter scale megatall building's height. At the first step, the WRF model is validated through the comparisons between the simulated wind data and meteorological observations, including the ground-based observatory data and radiosonde data. At the second step, the results from the WRF model are used in the assessment of directional wind power densities, based on which the directional electric powers at the corresponding heights of the platforms are estimated as well. The results indicate that the maximum wind power density and electric power occur at 300 and 200 m above the ground, respectively. Additionally, both the wind power density and electric power from the north and south are significantly larger than those from the other two directions. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.