Quietrevolution discussion

Robert Webb, CEO of XCO2, kindly responded to some of the earlier discussion about his company's wind turbine, the Quietrevolution. His response to Henry duPont's comment that vertical-axis turbines are less efficient than horizontal-axis machines:

"It is not true that HAWTs are inherently more efficient than VAWTs. There are good aerodynamic studies showing the efficiency is similar in theory. The issue is simply that to date vastly more has been spent on developing HAWTs.

In fact for small scale applications near the ground, where the wind is turbulent, we predict a 20% to 40% better output for a VAWT due to responsiveness to rapidly varying wind conditions."

We would welcome a deeper discussion of the engineering and aerodynamic challenges involved in wind turbines. In the meantime, there's a lot to be said for any alternative-energy product that brings aesthetic satisfaction along with its other benefits. Such an edge can make all the difference when someone is contemplating the installation of a wind machine. The same can be said of lightbulbs, solar panels, and  other products. If someone has to sacrifice 25 percent of efficiency in order to put up with a switch to an alternative source in the first place, he's still 75 percent better off than before.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Comments

[Jeremy]

I predict it will take at least another 10 years before the wind industry completely settles the HAWT versus VAWT arguments.

When we're done, I suspect we'll all settle on:

Tenet #1: TOTAL POWER HAWTS WIN: For HAWTs, the last 30 years has seen a fairly constant... the Bigger the Better Rule of Thumb in price performance. In fact, this one isn't much debated anymore. What with 5 MW turbines bigger than a spinning Airbus A380 now going into production. I suspect that you will NEVER see a VAWT with more than 1 MW nameplate.

TENET #2: In land-constrained environments and light winds, where the vast majority of the planet lives, the VAWTs have it. The ability to capture light winds, and omnidirectional winds, and do so in a smaller format (watts per square meter of land/roofing), with quieter output, and slower, safer spinning blades means that VAWTs will be the winner for urban, space constrained places (marine apps, oil rigs, city skyscrapers, etc.)

TENET #3: In community scale, and campus scale applications, I am guessing it will be a "tie" but I could see HAWTs winning more in the 30-500 kW format. If you've got enough room for a maple tree, you've probably got the space/noise/safety tolerance for a HAWT.

Of course, I bring a heavy VAWT bias to the game, see more on the Wind-Sail startup at:
wind-sail.blogspot.com.