Mapping Wind Energy Potential in New York City Using Geographic Information System Platform and Semi-Analytical Methods

An important step toward harnessing urban wind energy is to determine the local wind levels. Local weather services commonly report regional wind levels, which don’t account for the urban morphologies. Urban local wind patterns can deviate significantly from regional wind levels. In this research, a semi-analytical methodology is employed to calculate local wind levels in New York City using regional wind levels. The model up-scales the regional wind level to the urban boundary layer; it then downscales the wind level to the average building height of urban localities through two downscaling steps. The analysis is implemented in a geographic information system (GIS) framework. Detailed information regarding building geometries in Manhattan is used to calculate aerodynamic parameters of the city localities, which is used as input for the semi-empirical method. The results are presented as localization wind index map of the city, which can be used to calculate local wind level at any location in the city as a function of the regional wind level. The local wind index can be used to identify the urban localities with higher local wind index, which are more suited for investment to harness the wind energy on top of high rises.