Vertical turbines are more efficient in large-scale wind farms: study
Wind turbine design engineer here:<p>There are several significant barriers to adoption that VAWTs face.<p>1. The wind resource is more powerful and more consistent higher off the ground. The hub heights of industry standard horizontal-axis wind turbines are reaching 135+ meters for the new generation of large offshore machines. These vertical axis machines are much lower to the ground.<p>2. Contrary to the claims of the authors in the Renewable Energy Paper (they say "The potential applications for VAWTs are endless, because the turbines are cheaper and easier to manufacture and maintain. "), vertical axis turbines have consistently had fatigue issues. There is an interesting history of the test-campaigns of vertical-axis machines at Sandia National Laboratories [1] that discusses this. In the 70s and 80s vertical machines were much more common than they are today.<p>3. It is a huge risk for an industry that is shipping proven technology to switch to a new paradigm that will require much more research and testing to work at scale. It's certainly possible and I find the possibility fascinating as a curious engineer. I would love to have a secure position developing VAWT tech or working on airborne wind machines (check out ground-based generator concepts to get an idea of where I think that will progress, not ill-conceived onboard generator kites like Makani).<p>The problem of wake blockage in large wind farms (and from adjacent farms to each other) is definitely significant though. The current "top" strategy is wake steering, where turbines at the front use their yaw drive to capture less power and allow for more power to reach the turbines in the rows following. [1]. The bleeding edge of this may be vertical wake steering, which can entrain high-energy wind from above the farm into the plant to capture more power [3].<p>[1] <a href="https://energy.sandia.gov/wp-content/gallery/uploads/SAND2012-0304.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://energy.sandia.gov/wp-content/gallery/uploads/SAND201...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68396.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68396.pdf</a>
[3] <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7963037" rel="nofollow">https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7963037</a>