Despite the increase in pro-ecological awareness, energy recycling is still omitted and activities aimed at energy recovery are not carried out where it is economically justified and beneficial for the natural environment and climate – says Jerzy Czaplejewicz, head of the Prototype Construction Team at the Institute of Applied Sciences and New Technologies (INSiNT). The LIFE-Urban Wind.PL project, implemented by the ECO FOR LIFE Ecology Support Foundation in cooperation with INSiNT as part of the EU LIFE program, co-financed by the European Commission and the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFOŚiGW), focuses on energy recovery from air streams forced by human activity.
“For many years we have been observing the phenomena occurring in the so-called of urbanized space in terms of air flow flows, especially the drafts of air existing between buildings, on the roofs of skyscrapers, industrial facilities, as well as inside buildings in tunnels or ventilation ducts, which have been so far overlooked in terms of wind energy,” explains Jerzy Czaplejewicz.
The result of the LIFE-UrbanWind.PL project is the Urban Wind Power Station (UWPS) device – a generator that converts mechanical energy from air streams into clean, green energy.
UWPS is a universal, cylindrical generating device, safe for the environment, receiving the mechanical energy of air streams and transforming them into electricity.
Metropolises are turning into heat islands. Failure to use forced air streams to re-produce clean energy is too high a cost of inaction in times characterized by the need to create and optimize distributed, waste and residual energy systems.
UWPS may become a revolutionary solution to the problem of CO2 emissions in urban areas and perfectly fit into the EU directives and the main goal of the climate and energy package, Zero-Emission Europe by 2050.
In the LIFE-Urban Wind.PL project, prototypes of collision-free, cylindrical wind turbines up to 4m high were built, which use air streams with irregular characteristics to drive a generator with an electricity buffer storage. 12 prototype devices with a nominal power of 5kW, 10kW and 20 kW were tested for 1 year in various locations.