Wind energy system for buildings in an urban environment

Urban built environments have grown dramatically worldwide in the past few decades due to rapid economic and population growths. The potential utilization of renewable resources is highly desirable for a healthy urban environment. Hence, urban wind energy exploration has captured increasing attention from urban planners, architects, engineers, and researchers for the sustainable growth of urban environments and the well-being of urban dwellers. Advances in technologies in the design and installation of wind energy systems in buildings are paving the way to enhance wind energy generation in urban environments. This article presents a perspective of wind energy exploration based on building and urban aerodynamics. In particular, this article presents a review of current developments of wind energy systems in the built environments, factors affecting urban wind flow and resulting consequences, examples of recent designs of urban/building-based wind energy systems, including building integrated vertical axis wind turbine, power window, wind-induced vibration-based wind energy harvesters, double skin and other innovative building façade systems, and wind source exploration. The potential application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in the context of wind engineering and wind energy system is also presented.