The ever increasing population causes ever greater strain on the environment around us. As supplies of natural resources dwindle there is increasing focus on the use of renewable energy sources such as wind farms. Energy companies can use CFD to optimise the design and placement of individual wind turbines or entire windfarms, taking into account the local conditions such as predominant wind directions and local geography.

The uses of CFD are not limited to that though. There are a wind range of environmental applications that CFD can help optimise or understand including: the heat island effect, solar farms, solar updraft towers and pollutant dispersion in urban environments are some of the few applications PHOENICS has been used for in the past