EFFECTIVE UTILIZATION OF WIND ENERGIES BY THE WIND SOLAR TOWER -HARNESSING SOLAR ENERGIES AND WIND ENERGIES BY ONE SIMPLE DEVICE-

Abstract

The Wind Solar Tower (WST) is a power-generating device which can harness solar energies and wind energies simultaneously. Its turbine is driven by an updraft induced in the tower. The updraft is commonly induced by solar heating. However, we made it clear that the updraft can also be induced by wind blowing around the top of the tower. We designed the shape of the WST to generate the updraft effectively. By wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulations, we found that a diffuser-shaped tower and a vortex generator which is installed on the top of the tower produce the updraft effectively.