Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) can be both small and large. However, they are not the mainstay of the wind industry and for that reason they are assigned a category under Small Wind Turbines on this site.
There is also an extensive collection of archival and recent photographs of VAWTs and various forms of Darrieus turbines on the Photos section of this site. There you can find photos of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.
Quiet Revolution, the one-time manufacturer of an architecturally dramatic helical wind turbine, filed for bankruptcy on 15 April in London. Note: The following is adapted from the forthcoming...[more]
In the spring of 2014, Urban Green Energy (UGE) announced with much fanfare that they had completed third-party performance testing on a new product, the VisionAIR wind turbine. As press releases for...[more]
Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) continue to get attention, press and R&D funding. Antagonists of mainstream wind generation continually point at them as if they were a superior technology. People...
Over the past few months, an interesting wrinkle on the vertical-axis-wind-turbines-are-better mythology has surfaced: that they are superior offshore and that many countries are investing heavily in...
Thank you for your critique on the CBC article. I do not expect to get praise or support from anyone in the wind industry for the efforts that I have made, but I do wish you and others, would keep an...[more]
It must be a slow news week out on the Canadian Prairies. No big city mayor smoking crack or threatening to kill someone in Saskatchewan to grab attention. Instead they’re touting another—yes...[more]
United States Attorney Thomas G. Walker announced that on October 18, 2013, a federal grand jury in Raleigh, North Carolina returned a two-count indictment charging JAMES ALAN ROWAN with securities...[more]
Updated with a photo of the 18 Venger V2 Savonius turbines on the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[more]
Following the latest round of coverage, Gizmag takes a deeper look at his concept, and wonders whether the idea of packing turbines into as tight a space as possible might overlook some wind energy...
I’ve written a lot about the folly of “building integrated” wind turbines, or the corollary, roof top wind turbines. It’s a plague here in the US, Britain, and the Netherlands. To reiterate, the...[more]
Hoosiers have definitely drunk the cool-aid. Worse, it's another example of architectural greenwashing. According local press reports the Nature Conservancy has installed the "crown jewel" of its...[more]
The wind industry isn’t going to be disrupted by someone with an idea and a Powerpoint pitch. If someone is approaching you with a great investment opportunity based on a ‘new’ wind generation...
The helical rotor design is reputed to reduce or eliminate the torque ripple encountered in traditional two-blade Darrieus or eggbeater turbines.[more]
FloWind’s development of the Extended Height-to-Diameter (EHD) Vertical Axis Wind Turbine was the last gasp of Darrieus wind turbine development in the US.[more]
I've added photos of historical interest to my web pages on Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) and Darrieus turbines of various designs. . .[more]
There are now several measured power curves of the Mariah Windspire publicly available. This is one of the very few contemporary household-size (small) Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) to complete...[more]
These are series of photos of a "demonstration" of "urban wind" using five Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) from three different manufacturers at Crissy Field in San Francisco. They are all very...
An insightful summary of how the aerodynamic properties of VAWTs differ from HAWTs by an authority on aerodynamics presented at the 2000 AWEA conference. . .
It is unlikely that any “modern” reinvention of Darrieus designs can perform any better than the experimental turbines Sandia and its contractors developed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. . .[more]
The Windspire is a vertical‐axis gyromill. The H‐rotor is 1.22 m (4 ft) in diameter by 6.1 m (20 ft) tall, capturing a swept area of 7.43 m2 (80 ft2). The data presented in this report was collected...
“For all wind turbines, other than those used for more decorative purposes, the cost of energy is important.”[more]
This review was a case of cleaning my desktop and before electronically filing away Sandia's year-old report on its work with Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs), I'd decided to thumb through it and...[more]
Since Wind Energy Basics was first published in 1999, there has been an explosion of interest in new vertical-axis wind turbines. In that edition, the conclusion illustrating one photograph was...[more]
Note: The following is an excerpt from my 2009 book Wind Energy Basics Revised: A Guide to Home- and Community-scale Wind Energy Systems. I am reprinting it here because of the constant...[more]
In preparing for a review of a Sandia report on its decades-long research on Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs), especially the Darrieus or eggbeater design, I thought it might be wise to first see...[more]
The quest to slay the faulty dragon of conventional, or horizontal axis, wind turbines (HAWTS) has been an impossible one, thus far. The domination of conventional wind comes from their reliability,...
Mariah Power, the company that produced the Sousas' wind turbines, generated headlines several years ago as an example of a successful northern Nevada company making headway in the renewable energy...
The French test site, SEPEN (Site Expérimental pour le Petit Eolien de Narbonne), published a performance report 28 September 2009 on Mariah's 1.2 kW Windspire. The test site is in a windy region in...[more]
You have to give them credit, small turbine manufacturers are a competitive lot, especially small VAWT suppliers. They are tripping over themselves to see who can win the award for worst turbine...[more]
Mike Nelson call this the worst turbine install in history. It certainly ranks right up there with some recent installations by Mariah, a Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine manufacturer.[more]
Mag-Wind is back. Grab your children. Bar the door. The dead walk. . . Worse Ed Begley and Jay Leno, those omnipresent endorsers of all things "green", have leapt to the aid of the undead. Their...[more]
The Muncie (Indiana) Star recently reported that the Delaware County Redevelopment Commission awarded almost $1 million to a relatively little known German company.[more]
The Windspire is a 1.2-kilowatt (kW) vertical-axis small wind turbine. The turbine tower is 9.1 meters tall, and its rotor area is 1.2 by 6.1 meters. The turbine has a permanent-magnet generator with...
Stewart Russell captured these photos of a Mariah Windspire installed at the College School in St. Louis. Stewart is an experienced wind hand and noted that the Windspire, which is an unguyed,...[more]
This is a classic example of how not to install wind turbines to best advantage. The best that can be said about this installation is that at least they were not mounted on top of the building.[more]
Below is summary of principle characteristics of mini- and household-size Vertical Axis Wind Turbines on the international market. It is not intended to include every VAWT marketed worldwide.[more]
The pyramids have always been thought to contain some magical power. Maybe they do. Maybe Mag-Wind has found a way to tap into this magical power, because they certainly are not going to get much...[more]
At least several times a year, yet another announcement about a “technological breakthrough” arrives in my e-mail box. Invariably, the device being “unveiled” is a vertical axis wind turbine, and in...
False, Misleading and Deceptive Claims Regarding AWEA's Purported Endorsement of WindTree Energy Generator[more]
An edited version of the following was read on National Public Radio's Weekend Sunday program. Weekend Edition Sunday Re: Robbie Harris (sp)'s report on Wind Energy for Chicago/Sunday 26 August,...[more]
Like ducted turbines, a perennial favorite of hucksters and charlatans is, for lack of a better word, squirrel cage rotors. [more]
Conclusion of Sandia's design development contract for FloWind's EHD Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. . .
