WEB: Wind Energy Brussels

WEB: Wind Energy Brussels. Combined wind simulation and life cycle analysis for the development of highly efficient wind-driven renewable energy districts in the Brussels Capital Region.

Project summary : This project developed a comprehensive approach to report the potential energy harvesting, the life cycle assessment, the visual and noise effects of urban wind turbines, to inform sustainable urban policy making processes. Our analysis identified the locations in an urban area that are most suitable for wind energy harvesting by performing extensive and accurate wind simulations of selected areas in the Brussels Capital Region using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Simulations were based on meteorological data from the last 30 years, and made use of detailed 3D models of buildings and terrain. The impact of the extensive adoption of urban wind energy harvesting was assessed using a life cycle assessment (LCA) to ensure that the deployment of wind turbines results in a net environmental benefit and to understand environmental hot spots in the harvesting, use and end-of-life. The visual and noise effect of urban wind turbines were quantified with novel 3D visibility analysis and noise propagation analysis for the public spaces. Especially for the visibility analysis a two-phase approach was used, one with Simple Geometry Visibility Analysis and one with Detailed Geometry Visibility Analysis.

Results : The results of the project are reported here. Data from the project are available in figshare. Python code used in the project for visibility analysis is available in github.

Period : October 2022 - September 2024

Involved : Maider Llaguno Munitxa - André Stephan, Ioannis Tsionas from the Environment and Climat of LAB and the company BuildWind (Alessandro Gambale CEO, Gabriele Mosca CTO and Sampath Srikumar R&D Engineer)