Wind Shade

Wind Speed behind obstacle (in %)

This graph gives you an estimate of how wind speeds decrease behind a blunt obstacle, i.e. an obstacle which is not nicely streamlined. In this case we use a seven story office building, 20 metres tall and 60 metres wide placed at a distance of 300 m from a wind turbine with a 50 m hub height. You can quite literally see the wind shade as different shades of grey. The blue numbers indicate the wind speed in per cent of the wind speed without the obstacle.
At the top of the yellow wind turbine tower the wind speed has decreased by some 3 per cent to 97 per cent of the speed without the obstacle. You should note that this means a loss of wind energy of some 10 per cent, i.e. 1.03³ - 1, as you may see in the graph at the bottom of this page.
If you have a reasonably fast computer (or a bit of patience with a slower one) you can plot tables and graphs like this one using the wind shade calculator in a couple of pages.

Wind energy behind obstacle (in %)