Talk:Vertical-axis wind turbine

Vertical
The title of this article is "Vertical axis wind turbine". A VAWT is a type of axis-perpendicular-to-wind turbine. It would be OK to have a section later to discuss other types of axis-perpendicular-to-wind turbines that are not vertical. It would also be OK to come up with a new article that is about that broader category, and to prominently link to it from here. But that's not what this article is, and there's no reason to redefine the word vertical in the lead. Darrieus's patent does not use the term "vertical axis," so the fact that his patent includes other orientations does not mean that they are VAWTs.Ccrrccrr (talk) 04:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * To change the position of the Darrieus axis from standing vertikal to horizontal position changes physikal parameters too. Gravity, wich is no problem for vertical rotors, becomes a factor to be responded to. Depending on the position of the blades on their way round, Gravity forces change their impact on them, together with different impacts of windpower pending on bladeposition to the wind and the outward Power of the weight of the blades with the spin - all of them interfered by eachother, horizontal position comparing to vertikal axis makes a big diff not just by their position.


 * To compare: Let your arm hang down a while an then move your arm into a horizontal position. What do you feel after keeping this horizontal position for a few minutes? Maybe you get the feeling of the powerchanges for the turning blades this way.


 * Therefore, in reality you will not find many Darrieus- or Savonius-rotors (to name just two typical VAWT-types) working on perpendicular systems, most of them have a vertical axis to work with. --Kalinco (talk) 07:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of developing the article more broadly - but as a different article to be linked from this article. MaynardClark (talk) 12:13, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

obviously incorrect
This: VAWTs offer a number of advantages over traditional horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). They can be packed closer together in wind farms, allowing more in a given space. This is not because they are smaller, but rather due to the slowing effect that HAWTs have on the air, forcing designers to separate them by ten times their width.

Saying this is like saying using 1 mop to clean a floor is not as efficient as using 10 mops to clean a floor. If a HAWT has a "slowing effect" on air, it means power is being extracted from it. Likewise, if you have 100 VAWT's in a row and the air isn't slowed down at all, it would suggest that the design of VAWT is horribly inadequate to even extract the slightest amount of energy from wind.

That whole sentence is inaccurate, should be removed -- and the [5] and [6] footnotes are used incorrectly (i.e. just because HAWTs slow air does not make them less efficient, the fact that you need less HAWTs makes them even MORE efficient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.198.82.34 (talk) 07:01, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This is not related to the fact HAWTs slow the wind more than VAWTs, but that both types of turbines increase the turbulence of the wind. However HAWTs are less capable of using turbulent wind, meaning that HAWTs near other turbines are less efficient than VAWTs near other turbines.86.63.4.191 (talk)

Hi, I would like to add something on the disadvantages of vawt: despite a quite larger variety of designs, VAWTs life span is very poor and unpredictable compared to HAWT; that's why they are not commercialized yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.75.175.53 (talk) 05:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello! I have spoken about VAWTs with a very knowledgeable coordinator of the Wind Energy Lab here at ISU. He expressed doubts with the accuracy of this article regarding the supposed advantages of VAWTs. Specifically how their "claimed inefficiencies are cancelled out by their abilities to take advantage of turbulent and gusty winds". VAWTs inefficiencies aren't "claimed" they simply are. One major drawback is that they simply aren't as efficient as HAWTs because their blades' swept area is a small fraction of the larger HAWT swept blade area. Additionally, the blades of a HAWT are all simultaneously being pushed by wind and so all contribute to the rotational energy of the shaft. Compare this to the VAWT where only one or two blades are directly being pushed by the wind, and the rest are simply "along for the ride". These two are the fundamental inefficiencies that VAWTs suffer from.

As far as the claim of VAWTs being able to effectively utilize "turbulent and gusty winds", there is some truth to the fact that VAWTs typically don't have the same limitations of HAWTs in that they do not need to adjust yaw or pitch on blades in order to achieve ideal power generation. Because of this, in storms and other periods of unusually high winds (over ~60 mph) HAWTs will activate brakes to avoid damage. While it is possible that VAWTs could continue to generate power during these unusually high wind speeds, simple logic tells us that it is much more likely for wind to not exceed 60 mph. Because of this fact, the argument that VAWTs are more efficient because their inherent inefficiencies are offset by their "storm power" capabilities is one that I would have a hard time believing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2610:130:115:701:C0D5:52CC:6857:BCD (talk) 01:31, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * This article is yet one more example of Wikipedia's inability to deal with controversy. It is highly promotional and unbalanced, and very poorly sourced and documented. 2601:1C0:4D01:7A6B:916:EB1E:7F7E:E53B (talk) 09:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

History of VAWTs
How long have VAWTs been explored? What are the earliest records of VAWTs? I'd like to know more about the long history of VAWTs. Who could enhance that aspect of the article, perhaps to a point of developing a separate specialty article about the history of VAWTs?

The discussion (immediately above) about the traverse-to-wind rotatable airfoil of Massachusetts Republican Congressman Butler Ames in 1908 is one such early historical mention. But surely VAWTs were explored before Congressman Ames in the Bay State. Butler Ames was an alum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MaynardClark (talk) 12:05, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

"typhoon turbine"
Challenergy, a vertical-axis Magnus wind power generator, works via the Magnus effect, where a spinning object directs air around it faster on one side than on the other. Setenzatsu.2 (talk) 21:49, 21 April 2020 (UTC)