Balconies can guide wind turbine placement in cities

The complex geography of cities poses challenges to building urban wind energy. The dense arrangement of buildings, as well as their diverse designs, can affect airflow patterns and thus the wind energy potential, or the amount of wind energy that can be generated. However, few studies have examined how balconies on densely packed high rises affect wind energy potential.

Wang et al. investigated how balcony presence and geometry, as well as building arrangement and height, modify wind characteristics like wind power density and turbulence intensity that determine wind energy potential.

The authors conducted computational fluid dynamics simulations, revealing that wind power density is affected by both balcony depth and the number of balconies per building. Buildings with fewer balconies are better sites for rooftop wind turbines. They found building height also affects wind characteristics: taller buildings channel the wind, amplifying its velocity.

“This work can be used to provide design guidelines for compact building arrays with balconies for urban planning and wind energy exploitation,” said author Wen-Yu Wang. “The available wind energy potential on rooftop terraces of buildings and gaps between buildings can be significantly improved by varying the urban planning, balcony geometry, and wind directions.”

Next, the authors will extend these simulations to study how various building features, such as solar panels with different tilt angles, affect wind energy potential. They also plan to explore different types of wind turbines, including their lifetimes and aerodynamic noise.

“We hope to continue to optimize the parameters of the building array in the future and eventually apply the concept in real cities,” Wang said.

Source: “Wind energy potential in compact urban areas with balconies,” by Wen-Yu Wang, Min-Chen Tsai, and Zhong-Han Liu, Physics of Fluids (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0243434 .

This paper is part of the Flow and Civil Structures Collection, learn more here .