Vertical Axis Wind Turbines
Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) can be either small or large. Regardless, they are not the mainstay of the wind industry. Very few exist and even fewer than those work. For many years, I kept these pages as subcategory of small wind turbines. However, this arrangement no longer worked well with the current web site design so I’ve put them under the main category of wind turbines even though most serious work on the technology ceased years if not decades ago.
Chapter 6. Vertical-Axis and Darrieus Wind Turbines, of my book Wind Energy for the Rest of Us: A Comprehensive Guide to Wind Power and How to Use It, has an extensive discussion of the technology–all in one place.
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.
FloWind’s Extended Height to Diameter VAWT
By
Paul Gipe
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.
Photos of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines
By
Paul Gipe
I’ve added photos of historical interest to my web pages on Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) and Darrieus turbines of various designs. . .
Mariah Windspire VAWT Measured Performance
By
Paul Gipe
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 full testing and certification in the US. . .
Crissy Field Small VAWT Demonstration Photos Posted
By
Paul Gipe
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 small. The Mariah Windspire, the only one of the bunch that has been tested to IEC standards is rated at 1 kW. The two Windspires were operating when I visited in 2012.
DAF-Indal 50 kW Longest Lived Canadian Darrieus?
By
Paul Gipe
In 1997, Canadian meteorologist Jim Salmon reported that a 50 kW DAF-Indal turbine at Christopher Point, on the southern tip …
The Evolution of Rotor and Blade Design
By
Jim Tangler
An insightful summary of how the aerodynamic properties of VAWTs differ from HAWTs by an authority on aerodynamics presented at the 2000 AWEA conference. . .
