all's finally going right for large-scale wind, what's wrong with its domestic counterpart? One problem is turbulence: in urban areas, buildings, trees and other urban furniture obstruct the wind. The result is erratic wind speeds, and most home turbines simply aren't designed for that. "Home turbines are definitely not ready for the mainstream," says Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity. "The current crop suffers from the same fundamental problem of design. They are horizontal-axis machines which work well in open areas but are unsuited to urban areas due to the way they need to rotate to track changing wind directions - called hunting."
The hint is that perhaps vertical axis machines might be worth trying ... but I don't know enough to comment. I'd be delighted to get comments to help on this matter.
Renewable energy runs into turbulence on the home | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology: Filed in: wind, power, generation, domestic, UK
1 comment:
Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (or VAWTs) are indeed much better than Horizontal-Axis (HAWTs) anywhere near obstructions (i.e. buildings or trees), because of the 'hunting' issue.
We have a computer model showing 30% better output for our quietrevolution VAWT, compared to a similar-sized HAWT in real world wind conditions near the ground. We are also developing gust-tracking software which will further improve the advantage.
VAWTs and HAWTs are similar in performance in theory, but in practice, VAWTs will be much better in nearly all applications where small wind turbines will be used!
check out www.quietrevolution.co.uk for more info.
Robert Webb, CEO
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