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Diploma and Master Theses (authored and supervised):

A. Sekula:
"Evaluation of Micro-Wind Generation in Urban Environment";
Supervisor: A. Mahdavi; Institut für Architekturwissenschaften, Abteilung Bauphysik und Bauökologie, 2013; final examination: 2013-04-29.



English abstract:
This work was influenced by research on current state of arts in Irish renewable energy sector. High level of wind availability has caused big development in recent years as well as ambitious plans for the near furutre in the field of wind energy harvesting. Governmental subsidizes, induced by the 2020 goals, have encouraged development of megawatt wind farms around the country. These very costly projects can often cause environmental issues as well as alter the nature of unobstructed Irish landscapes due to numerous towers as well as lengthy and expensive extensions of the grid, which is currently very poorly developed. Public awareness of wind energy harvesting is determined by those heavy, expensive technologies, which are unavailable to private users. Small scale wind generation has been very slowly becoming more popular among rural households where their performance has been studied and proven satisfactory. Producers of household turbines promise output of their technologies based on their own experiments, which take place in nearly ideal conditions. At the same time, a number of resources allow future users to predict output of desired technology by themselves. Wind spped data, the most important factor determining output those calculations, is also available from a number of sources for each area, leaving future user with a range of options Capricious behaviour of wind in urban environment raises a question whether satisfactory prediciton of a power generation is at all possible in those conditions. Limited monitoring of already implemented systems makes it difficult to evaluate efficiency of technologies available on the market. At the same time, off-grid communities work on developing their own, alternative systems which are cheaper, easier and quicker to produce and implement. There is, however, very little public knowledge on how these systems compare to mainstream technologies, especially in an urban environment.
This thesis tries to address all mentioned issues by:
- analysing wind patterns on various conditions to determine prospects for urban wind energy generation in Ireland.
- evaluationg wind energy predictions systems and looking for the most efficient ones that could be utilized by non-professional future wind turbine owners.
- undertaking a case study of a turbine placed in a typical Irish urban surroundings in order to understand difficulties related to small scale urban wind generation and relationship between power output and building demands.
- comparing an institutional wind energy utilization system with cheap, home-made alternative in search for technologies and systems that are most beneficial to provate users.

German abstract:
none - see english version

Keywords:
wind patterns, wind harvesting, power monitoring, turbine's efficiency, energy predicitons, energy demands, community projects, alternative renewable systems, meteorological data