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.
Photos of Dabiri VAWT Test Site—Wing Power Turbines are Down
By
Paul Gipe
Oh the ways of the wind. It blows where it will–or something to that effect. We were on our way to pick cherries. That’s a fairly innocuous activity. From Bakersfield we had to cross the Antelope Valley to reach Palmdale. Well, I thought. I might as well stop by Dr. John O. Dabiri’s test site and take some pictures of his experiment in “schooling” wind turbines.
Finally a New Generation of VAWT Busters Has Arrived: Debunking IceWind
By
Paul Gipe
The onslaught of super-dooper new windmill inventions is never ending. Frankly it’s wearing out us old timers. We can’t keep up with the damn things. We try to ignore them but our friends and colleagues keep throwing them in our faces, forcing us to react.
Mag-Wind’s James Rowan Captured in Saskatoon after Four Years on the Lam
By
Paul Gipe
Four years after a federal grand jury in Raleigh, North Carolina returned a two-count indictment against James Alan Rowan for his fraudulent wind turbine investments, the fugitive was caught in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Noise, eigenfrequencies and turbulence behavior of a 200 kW H-rotor vertical axis wind turbine
By
Erik Möllerström
The work within this thesis is made in collaboration between Halmstad University and Uppsala University. A 200-kW semi-guy-wired VAWT H-rotor, owned by Uppsala University but situated in Falkenberg close to Halmstad, has been the main subject of the research although most results can be generalized to suit a typical H-rotor.
UGE’s VAWT wind turbines generating regret; $100,000 turbines to create $1.50 in electricity monthly
By
Paul Gottlieb
The $107,516 spires stand immobile more than two months after they were erected and more than a year after the city council approved them.
Swedish IPO to support vertical axis floating wind tech
By
Tsvetomira Tsanova
SeaTwirl has already installed a 30-kW prototype floating offshore wind turbine at Lysekil and it wants to build a full-scale machine, SeaTwirl S2, by 2020.
