Swiss VAWT Vertical Sky has been re-installed at Germany’s Grevenbroich test site west of Cologne.
The articulating, straight-blade VAWT—also known as a Giromill–lost one of its three rotor arms on 15 November at the test site.
Thilo Wirth, a second cousin, visited the Grevenbroich test site 7 June 2022 and took a series of photos of the VAWT’s components.
Patrick Richter, the Swiss designer, has been developing the 750 kW turbine for the past decade with support from the Swiss energy department, the Swiss climate foundation, Audi, and the European Union. He installed a prototype in Switzerland previously.
The wind turbine is one of the largest vertical-axis wind turbine ever built, sweeping 1,730 m² of the wind stream. It is twice the size of Robert McAlpine’s Musgrove derived VAWT 850 built in 1990. It is also just shy of twice the swept area of Sandia’s last iteration of its Darrieus design, the Sandia 34-meter machine.
Vertical Sky 32 is also bigger than the last French effort, Nenuphar 1.
The largest vertical-axis wind turbine ever built was Canada’s Eole, the giant Darrieus wind turbine swept 4,000 m².
My thanks to Herr Wirth for the photos.
For more on vertical-axis wind turbines, see Modern History of Vertical-Axis (Darrieus) Wind Turbines Published. See also
- Photos of Damaged Giromill at Grevenbroich Test Site, and
- Giant Giromill Loses Blade at Grevenbroich Test Site.
