Vertical axis wind turbines stand up to scrutiny

Based on over 11,500 hours of computer simulation, the research from Oxford Brookes University found that Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) boost each other’s performance when clustered together, with grouped pairs seeing a 15 per cent rise in output. This is in contrast to the more traditional Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), which produce turbulence that affects the performance of other HAWTs downwind.

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"Modern wind farms are one of the most efficient ways to generate green energy, however, they have one major flaw: as the wind approaches the front row of turbines, turbulence will be generated downstream,” said lead author of the study, Joachim Toftegaard Hansen, and engineering graduate at Oxford Brookes.

"In other words, the front row will convert about half the kinetic energy of the wind into electricity, whereas for the back row, that number is down to 25-30 per cent. Each turbine costs more than £2m/MW. As an engineer, it naturally occurred to me that there must be a more cost-effective way."