Comparison of vertical axis and horizontal axis.

Just like windmills, wind turbines take the advantage of the wind energy and transform it into different
form of energy. In this case study, wind turbine converts the kinetic energy of the wind into electrical
energy. Wind turbines are used for various applications, from harnessing energy for an entire city to a
small power generation for personal use. Small wind turbines are usually selected for local usage. With
the capability to produce electricity less than 100 kW, they are usually installed in the isolated, remote
and off-grid areas where there is no connection to the national grid [5]. Nowadays, the wind turbine
technology has been used for everyday use and not only to power up a rural village, through various
innovation and development. In December 2015, built by French Company, New Wind, the “wind tree”
has been introduced to the world. It is a vertical wind turbine with several vertical blades, made in the
shape of a tree. With just under 30 ft tall and 23 ft wide, the “wind tree” has 54 leaf-turbine that
soundlessly rotating, harnessing energy up to 5.4 kW energy at a time from wind with speed less than 5
mph [6]. Annually, the wind tree is capable of producing 2400 kWh of electricity, enough to power up a
house. In addition, they are pleasing to the eyes too.

The HAWT concept as depicted in Figure 1 has already been used as early as 5000 B.C. where people
extracting the energy from the wind to move boats along the Nile River [7]. Since then, the wind
turbines have gone through significant innovation and improvisation in their design for optimum
performance. HAWT consists of blades that extract wind energy on horizontal axis and are parallel to the
ground. By facing the wind flow perpendicularly, the blades work and turn due to aerodynamic lift.
HAWT is the most popular choice of wind turbine and has received more funding for research and
development since it offers significant advantage over VAWT [8]. HAWT have a greater efficiency then
VAWT when extracting energy from the wind force due to its design that allows it to extract the energy
through the full rotation of the blades when placed under consistent wind flow [9]. It is also immune to
backtracking effect [10]. Fig. 1: Horizontal axis wind turbine (Source: Windpower Engineering &
Development) However, HAWT has a major disadvantage, which is the fact that it must always be
pointed in the wind direction to work efficiently. With unpredictable wind direction, extra mechanism is
required to make sure the blades will always be facing the wind direction to extract maximum power
output. Small wind turbine usually uses a simple wind vane to position itself into the direction of the
wind stream. For larger wind turbine, it consists of a yaw meter to determine the correct position of the
wind flow and a yaw motor to position the turbine into accurate direction of the wind [11]. Because of
this disadvantage, HAWT works excellently in environment with consistent and low turbulence wind as it
does not need to change its orientation too frequent. 2.3. VAWT In contrast to HAWT, Figure 2 shows
the blades for VAWT rotate perpendicularly to the ground and around the vertical axis. This type of
turbine utilizes drag or lift or a combination of the two to operate. VAWT has also been used for ages
and in fact, the first windmills that people have ever known are VAWT before HAWT appears and
becomes popular at some points in the history of wind turbine. There are generally two main designs of
VAWT and both designs work on different principles. The first design is Savonius that uses drag forces to
work just like a water wheel and the other design is Darrieus that uses aerodynamic blade to generate
lift and turn the turbine. Fig. 2: Vertical axis wind turbine (Source: Windpower Engineering &
Development) Although VAWT has not been given as much attention as HAWT in its research and
development, it has several significant advantages compared to HAWT. Unlike HAWT that is required to
face the wind stream all the time in order to give the optimum output, VAWT is omnidirectional and can
receive wind from any direction [12]. VAWT is the best choice to be installed in the slow and more
turbulent wind environment such as urban areas because it can generally start to produce power at such
low wind speed. The system for VAWT such as gearbox and other equipment can be packed together
and installed closer to the ground, hence eliminating the need for extra cost for maintenance and
making it easier to be controlled [13]. Finally, the VAWT are quieter than HAWT too. However, the
disadvantage of VAWT also cannot be ignored easily. VAWT is inefficient in high speed wind
environment because it has very low starting torques and issues on its dynamic stability. VAWT is also
vulnerable to backtracking because its blade moves in the same direction to the wind and thus the
blades need to travel back into the wind flow before being pushed back around [14]. It is important to
note that previous studies comparing VAWT and HAWT have shown mixed results. There can either be
that there is no significant difference between them [15] or one is simply better than the other.

In contrast to HAWT, Figure 2 shows the blades for VAWT rotate perpendicularly to the ground and
around the vertical axis. This type of turbine utilizes drag or lift or a combination of the two to operate.
VAWT has also been used for ages and in fact, the first windmills that people have ever known are
VAWT before HAWT appears and becomes popular at some points in the history of wind turbine. There
are generally two main designs of VAWT and both designs work on different principles. The first design
is Savonius that uses drag forces to work just like a water wheel and the other design is Darrieus that
uses aerodynamic blade to generate lift and turn the turbine.

This study is focused on building the functional wind turbines and comparing the performance of HAWT
and VAWT under certain wind speed and behaviours, which is just one of the aspects that need to be
considered. In term of power generation under steady wind stream, HAWT is clearly the better one. The
HAWT is able to produce much higher energy in steady and high wind stream. However, this is not a
feasible form of analysis because the two types of wind turbines are not comparable in this regard. The
huge gap in current and voltage output is due the major weight difference between both wind turbines.
The weight of the VAWT is almost double the weight of the HAWT. This factor really affects the
performance of the prototype as more wind speed is needed to turn heavier blade section

A better comparison can be made based on the second indoor testing: wind angle change. VAWT is
efficient in this environment where the direction of the wind is changing. While the performance of
HAWT is dropping as the direction of the wind is away from the direction of the blade, VAWT is capable
to maintain the output throughout the test. In sporadic environment, HAWT is facing the difficulties to
respond while VAWT flourishes in turbulent and sporadic wind pattern. In Malaysia where the wind
direction is unpredictable, a VAWT with improvable performance would most likely perform better than
the HAWT due to its ability to handle turbulent and omni-directional wind.

Wind energy in built environment

Wind energy projects vary in size, from small turbines serving individual customers (often termed
‘behind the meter’ or ‘distributed wind’), to large turbines designed to provide wholesale electricity to
utilities or an electricity market (‘commercial’ or ‘utility-scale’). Large wind turbines grouped in farms
away from population centers provide the majority of the world’s wind energy supply. This is because
the best wind resources occur outside cities, where there are fewer obstructions to block or disrupt
wind flows. To bring this power into areas of demand, however, these systems require access to and
often the construction of new electric transmission infrastructure, which can be difficult to site and
finance. Wind energy projects sited in urban areas currently represent only a very small portion of
overall wind energy generation. However, as cities seek to exert more control over their energy destiny
and address the environmental impact of existing energy supplies, many are looking to wind as a
potential alternative. Cities are pursuing large wind projects on former industrial sites, landfills, parking
lots, waterfronts and other open areas (Fig. 20.1); coastal cities are looking offshore to develop large
wind farms in shallow waters 20.1 Vestas V27 wind turbine at the Great Lakes Science Center in
Cleveland, Ohio (courtesy of Derek Oyen (2008)). 458 Metropolitan sustainability © Woodhead
Publishing Limited, 2012 nearby; and small wind turbines are starting to be seen on rooftops and
integrated into the design of new buildings. Development of wind energy in metropolitan areas is
fraught with challenges. Wind energy systems are capital intensive and, although they have very low
operating costs, they rely on strong and consistent winds to generate energy over time to recover initial
investments. As a result, siting a wind turbine in a location that will guarantee adequate average wind
speeds is critical for developing a successful project. This normally necessitates placing a turbine on a
tower well above or away from nearby structures to minimize their effect on wind flows. However, in
cities, exposed wind turbines may attract the attention of neighbors opposed to the new view. Other
challenges with deploying wind in populated urban areas include noise emissions and concerns about
public safety. These and other issues associated with urban wind energy development are discussed
further in this chapter. Since the quality of the wind is most important for the viability of any wind
energy project, urban or otherwise, we begin with an overview of wind energy and considerations for
the built environment.

Wind turbines convert the wind’s kinetic energy into mechanical energy to run a generator and produce
electricity. Wind turbine components include: a rotor, which consists of blades or cups and a hub; the
drive train, which includes shaft, gearbox, coupling, a mechanical break and the electrical generator; the
foundation and possibly tower or pole; and the balance of the electrical system, such as controls, cables,
inverters and switchgear and transformers. Wind turbines tend to be distinguished by both their size (or
rated generating capacity) and the orientation of the axis from which the rotor spins. Most wind
turbines are designated as either a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) or a vertical axis wind turbine
(VAWT). While HAWTs have been the preferred turbine design, particularly for large utility-scale
projects, small-scale VAWTs are receiving increasing attention for use in urban environments. This is
because VAWT proponents claim they can produce energy in environments with fast changing and
turbulent winds and have a lower noise emissions profile than HAWTs. Size classifications are more
arbitrary. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) defines any wind turbine with more than 100
kilowatts (kW) of rated capacity as a large turbine and anything below this size as a small turbine (AWEA,
2008).1 The British Wind Energy Industry (BWEA) further divides the small wind turbine category into
‘micro wind’, which is anything less that 1.5 kW in rated capacity, ‘small wind’, which includes systems
between 1.5 and 15 kW, and ‘small–medium wind’, which includes systems from 15 to 100 kW (Table
20.4) (RenewableUK, 2010a). The various types of wind turbines that are being deployed in urban areas
are now examined in more depth.

HAWTs are the most common wind machine designs in use today. HAWTs utilize aerodynamic blades
(i.e. airfoils) fitted to a rotor, which can be positioned either upwind or downwind. HAWTs are typically
either two- or three-bladed and operate at high blade tip speeds. Machines with upwind rotors require a
yaw, or tail vane, to help them orient into the wind while downwind rotors have blades that are coned
allowing the turbine to orient on its own. One drawback identified with downwind rotors, however, is
that they have been known to ‘walk’ around when trying to line up with winds during low speed
conditions, diminishing low wind speed energy production (Gipe, 2009). Modern HAWTs use the
aerodynamic lift force to turn each rotor blade, in a manner similar to the way an airplane flies. The lift
force generally works as follows. When exposed to winds, air flows around both the upper and lower
portions of a blade. As a result of the blade’s curvature, however, air passes over the top of the blade
more quickly (owing to a longer fetch length) than the lower portion, producing a low-pressure area on
the topside. The pressure difference created between the top and bottom sides of the blade produces a
force in the direction of the top of the blade (Mathew, 2006). As shown in Fig. 20.10, the lift force acts
perpendicular to the ‘relative wind’ acting on the wind turbine blade (Gipe, 2004). The force of the lift is
actually stronger than the force of the wind against the blade, or the drag, which acts in parallel with the
airflows. This allows turbine blades to turn at speeds greater than could be achieved relying on drag
forces alone. Although some wind turbines also use the drag force to produce energy, most HAWTs are
designed to minimize drag while maximizing lift (Mathew, 2006)

VAWTs are typically small wind turbines that are characterized by an axis of rotation that is
perpendicular to the ground (see Table 20.6 for a selection of VAWTs). As a result, VAWTs can operate
independently of wind direction, which is a major advantage for urban applications where wind
direction can change rapidly. The two primary VAWT designs are derived from either the Darrieus (lift-
driven) or the Savonius (drag-driven) rotors. The lift-based Darrieus design looks like an eggbeater and
uses long airfoil shaped blades (i.e. tapered like airplane wings) to extract energy as the wind strikes the
blades perpendicularly. There are several variations on the Darrieus rotor, including some that have
straight blades, which are often called Gyromills (e.g. the Windspire, Fig. 20.12) and more advanced
designs including those by quietrevolution (Fig. 20.13) and Urban Green Energy. In ideal low-turbulence
wind environments, Darrieus turbines tend to have lower efficiencies than HAWTs. But under the high-
turbulence, directionally fluctuating wind conditions of an urban setting, Darrieus machines may run
more smoothly and produce more energy than HAWTs. Darrieus designs are the most common VAWTs.
Early examples, such as those made by FloWind and deployed in California’s Altamont and Tehachapi
passes in California, were built and operated in the 1980s. In fact, by the mid-1980s, FloWind had
installed 95 megawatts (MW) of its VAWTs, which produced as much as 100 million kilowatt hours at
their peak (Gipe, 2009). However, due to failing equipment and less-thanexpected energy production, all
of these systems were gone by the mid-1990s.

Compared with HAWTs and Darrieus VAWTs, Savonius designs turn slowly, but with high torque. The
most successful drag-based VAWTs are cup anemometers, which are widely used to monitor wind
speeds in many different types of applications (Gipe, 2009). Because they utilize drag forces, Savonius
VAWTs have lower tip speeds and power coefficients than turbines utilizing lift forces. Although they
have low cut-in speeds, drag based turbines are generally not viewed as good for producing electricity.
Also, Savonius turbines use more material than Darrieus machines and achieve a significantly lower
aerodynamic efficiency than their lift-driven VAWT cousins .

In 2008, in a particularly high-profile example, the manufacturer PacWind integrated 16 of its drum
VAWTs into a Times Square billboard (Fig. 20.16). The project was supposed to save as much as $12 000
to $15 000 per month in electricity costs and prevent 16.3 metric tons of carbon from being released
into the air yearly (Collins, 2008). For unknown reasons, however, the turbines have been removed and
replaced with solar panelsels.
Alternative energy tutorials
At the heart of any renewable wind power generation system is the Wind Turbine. Wind turbine
designs generally comprise of a rotor, a direct current (DC) generator or an alternating current (AC)
alternator which is mounted on a tower high above the ground.
So how are wind turbines designed to produce electricity?. In its simplest terms, a wind turbine is the
opposite to a house or desktop fan. The fan uses electricity from the mains grid to rotate and
circulate the air, making wind. Wind turbine designs on the other hand use the force of the wind to
generate electricity. The winds movement spins or rotates the turbines blades, which captures the
kinetic energy of the wind and convert this energy into a rotary motion via a shaft to drive a
generator and make electricity 
To help improve this interaction and therefore increase efficiency two types of wind turbine design
are available. The common horizontal axis and the vertical axis design. The horizontal axis wind
turbine design catches more wind so the power output is higher than that of a vertical axis wind
turbine design. The disadvantage of the horizontal axis design is that the tower required to support
the wind turbine is much higher and the design of the rotor blades has to be much better.

A Typical Wind Turbine Blade Design

The Vertical Axis Turbine or VAWT, is easier to design and maintain but offers lower performance
than the horizontal axis types due to the high drag of its simple rotor blade design. Most wind
turbines generating electricity today either commercially or domestically are horizontal axis machines
so it is these types of wind turbine design we will look at in this wind turbine tutorial.

• The Rotor – This is the main part of a modern wind turbine design that collects the winds energy
and transforms it into mechanical power in the form of rotation. The rotor consists of two or more
laminated-wood, fibreglass or metal “rotor blades” and a protective hub which rotates (hence its
name) around a central axis.
Just like an aeroplane wing, wind turbine blades work by generating lift due to their curved shape.
The rotor blades extract part of the kinetic energy from the moving air masses according to the lift
principle at a rate determined by the wind speed and the shape of the blades. The net result is a lift
force perpendicular to the direction of flow of the air. Then the trick is to design the rotor blade to
create the right amount of rotor blade lift and thrust producing optimum deceleration of the air and no
more.
Unfortunately the turbines rotor blades do not capture 100% all of the power of the wind as to do so
would mean that the air behind the turbines blades would be completely still and therefore not allow
any more wind to pass through the blades. The theoretical maximum efficiency that the turbines
rotor blades can extract from the wind energy amounts to between 30 and 45% and which is
dependant on the following rotor blade variables: Blade Design, Blade Number, Blade Length, Blade
Pitch/Angle, Blade Shape, and Blade Materials and Weight to name a few.

• Blade Design – Rotor blade designs operate on either the principle of the lift or drag method for
extracting energy from the flowing air masses. The lift blade design employs the same principle that
enables aeroplanes, kites and birds to fly producing a lifting force which is perpendicular to the
direction of motion. The rotor blade is essentially an aerofoil, or wing similar in shape to an
aeroplane wing. As the blade cuts through the air, a wind speed and pressure differential is created
between the upper and lower surfaces of the blade.
The pressure at the lower surface is greater and thus acts to “lift” the blade upwards, so we want to
make this force as big as possible. When the blades are attached to a central rotational axis, like a
wind turbine rotor, this lift is translated into a rotational motion.
Opposing this lifting force is a drag force which is parallel to the direction of motion and causes
turbulence around the trailing edge of the blade as it cuts through the air. This turbulence has a
braking effect on the blade so we want to make this drag force as small as possible. The
combination of lift and drag causes the rotor to spin like a propeller.
Drag designs are used more for vertical wind turbine designs which have large cup or curved
shaped blades. The wind literally pushes the blades out of the way which are attached to a central
shaft. The advantages of drag designed rotor blades is slower rotational speeds and high torque
capabilities making them useful for water pumping and farm machinery power. Lift powered wind
turbines having a much higher rotational speed than drag types and therefore are well suited for
electricity generation.

• Blade Number – The number of rotor blades a wind turbine design has is generally determined
by the aerodynamic efficiency and cost. The ideal wind turbine would have many thin rotor blades
but most horizontal axis wind turbine generators have only one, two or three rotor blades. Increasing
the number of rotor blades above three gives only a small increase in rotor efficiency but increases
its cost, so more than three blades are usually not required but small high spinning multi-bladed
turbine generators are available for home use. Generally, the fewer the number of blades, the less
material is needed during manufacturing reducing their overall cost and complexity.

Single bladed rotors have a counter balance weight on the opposite side of the rotor but suffer from
high material stress and vibration due to their unsmooth rotational motion of the single blade which
must move more rapidly to capture same amount of wind energy. Also with single or even double
bladed rotors, most of the available air movement and therefore wind power passes through the
unswept cross-sectional area of the turbine without interacting with the rotor decreasing their
efficiency.
Multi-bladed rotors on the other hand have a smoother rotational operation and lower noise levels.
Slower rotational speeds and torque are possible with multi-bladed designs which reduces the
stresses in the drive train, resulting in lower gearbox and generator costs. However, wind turbine
designs with many blades or very wide blades will be subject to very large forces in very strong
winds which is why most wind turbine designs use three rotor blades.

• An Odd or Even Number of Rotor Blades? – A wind turbine design which has an “EVEN”
number of rotor blades, 2, 4 or 6, etc, can suffer from stability problems when rotating. This is
because each rotor blade has an exact and opposite blade which is located 180 o in the opposite
direction. As the rotor rotates, the very moment the uppermost blade is pointing vertically upwards
(12 o’clock position) the lower most blade is pointing straight down in front of the turbine support
tower. The result is that the uppermost blade bends backwards, because it receives the maximum
force from the wind, called “thrust loading”, while the lower blade passes into the wind free area
directly in front of the supporting tower.
This uneven flexing of the turbines rotor blades (uppermost bent in the wind and the lowermost
straight) at each vertical alignment produces unwanted forces on the rotor blades and rotor shaft as
the two blades flex back and forth as they rotate. For a small rigid aluminium or steel bladed turbine
this may not be a problem unlike longer fibreglass reinforced plastic blades.
A wind turbine design which has an “ODD” number of rotor blades (at least three blades) rotates
smoother because the gyroscopic and flexing forces are more evenly balanced across the blades
increasing the stability of the turbine. The most common odd bladed wind turbine design is that of
the three bladed turbine. The power efficiency of a three bladed rotor is slightly above that of a
similar sized two bladed rotor and due to the additional blade they can rotate slower reducing wear
and tear and noise.
Also, to avoid turbulence and interaction between the adjoining blades, the spacing between each
blade of a multi-bladed design and its rotational speed should be big enough so that one blade will
not encounter the disturbed, weaker air flow caused by the previous blade passing the same point
just before it. Because of this limitation most odd type wind turbines have a maximum of three
blades on their rotors and generally rotate at slower speeds.
Generally, three bladed turbine rotors integrate better into the landscape, are more aesthetically
appealing and are more aerodynamically efficient than two bladed designs which contributes to the
fact that three bladed wind turbines are more dominate in wind power generation market. Although
certain manufacturers produce two and six-blade turbines (for sail boats). Other advantages of odd
(three) bladed rotors include smoother operation, less noise and fewer bird strikes which
compensate for the disadvantage of the higher material costs. Noise level is not affected significantly
by the blade count.

• Rotor Blade Length – Three factors determine how much kinetic energy can be extracted from
the wind by a wind turbine: “the density of the air”, “the speed of the wind” and “the area of the rotor”.
The density of the air depends upon how far above sea level you are while the wind speed is
controlled by the weather. However, we can control the rotational area swept by the rotor blades by
increasing their length as the size of the rotor determines the amount of kinetic energy a wind turbine
is able to capture from the wind.

The rotor blades rotate around a central bearing forming a perfect circle of 360 o as it rotates and as
we know from school, the area of a circle is given as: π.r2. So as the swept area of the rotor
increases, the area it covers also increases with the square of the radius. Thus, doubling the length
of a turbines blades results in an increase of four times its area which allows it to receive four times
as much wind energy. However, this greatly increases the size, weight and ultimately the cost of the
wind turbine design.
One important aspect of the blade length is the rotational tip-speed of the rotor resulting from the
angular velocity. The longer the turbine blade length the faster the rotation of the tip for a given wind
speed. Likewise, for a given rotor blade length the higher the wind speed the faster the rotation. So
why can we not have a wind turbine design with very longer rotor blades operating in a windy
environment producing lots of free electricity from the wind. The answer is that there becomes a
point where the length of the rotor blades and the speed velocity of the wind actually reduces the
output efficiency of the turbine. This is why many larger wind turbine designs rotate at much slower
speeds.
Efficiency is a function of how fast the rotor tip rotates for a given wind speed producing a constant
wind speed to tip ratio called the “tip-speed ratio” ( λ ) which is a dimensionless unit used to
maximise the rotor efficiency. In other words, “tip-speed ratio” (TSR) is the ratio of the speed of the
rotating blade tip in rpm to the speed of the wind in mph, and a good wind turbine design will
determine the rotor power for any combination of wind and rotor speed. The larger this ratio, the
faster the rotation of the wind turbine rotor at a given wind speed. The shaft speed that the rotor is
fixed too is given in revolutions per minute (rpm) and depends on the tip-speed and the diameter of
the turbines blades.
A turbines rotational speed is defined as: rpm = wind speed x tip-speed-ratio x 60 / (diameter x
π).
If a turbines rotor rotates too slowly, it allows too much wind to pass through undisturbed, and thus
does not extract as much as energy as it could. On the other hand, if the rotor blade rotates too
quickly, it appears to the wind as one large flat rotating circular disc, which creates large amounts of
drag and tip losses slowing the rotor down. Therefore it is important to match the rotational speed of
the turbine rotor to a particular wind speed so that the optimum efficiency is obtained.

Rotor Blade Pitch/Angle – fixed design wind turbine rotor blades are generally not straight or flat
like aeroplane aerofoil wings, but instead have a small twist and taper along their length from the tip
to the root to allow for the different rotational speeds along the blade. This twist allows for the blade
to absorb the winds energy when the wind is coming at it from different tangential angles and not just
straight-on. A straight or flat rotor blade will stop giving lift and may even stop (stall), if the rotor
blade is hit by the wind at different angles, called the “angle of attack” especially if this angle of
attack is too steep.

Therefore, to keep the rotor blade seeing an optimum angle of attack increasing lift and efficiency,
wind turbine design blades are generally twisted throughout the length of the blade. In addition, this
twist in the wind turbine design keeps the rotor blades from spinning too fast in high wind speeds.
However, for very large-scale wind turbine designs used for electrical power generation, this twisting
of the blades can make their construction very complicated and expensive, so some other form of
aerodynamic control is used to keep the blades angle of attack perfectly aligned with the wind
direction.
The aerodynamic power produced by the wind turbine can be controlled by adjusting the pitch angle
of the wind turbine in relationship to the angle of attack of the wind as each blade is rotated about its
longitudinal axis. Then rotor blades with pitch control can be flatter and more straight but generally
these large blades have a similar twist in their geometry but much smaller to optimise the tangential
loading on the rotor blade.
Each rotor blade has a rotational twist mechanism, either passive or dynamic built into the root of the
blade, producing a uniform incremental pitch control along its length (constant twist). The amount of
pitch required is only a few degrees as small changes in the pitch angle can have a dramatic effect
on the power output as we know from the previous tutorial that the energy contained in the wind is
proportional to the cube of the wind speed.
One of the major advantages of rotor blade pitch control is the increase in the wind speed window. A
positive pitch angle produces a large starting torque as the rotor begins to turn decreasing its cut-in
wind speed. Likewise, in high wind speeds when the rotors maximum speed limit is reached, the
pitch can be controlled to keep the rotors rpm from exceeding its limit by reducing their efficiency
and angle of attack.
Power regulation of a wind turbine can be achieved by using pitch control on the rotor blades to
either reduce or increase the lift force on the blades by controlling the angle of attack. Smaller rotor
blades achieve this by incorporating a small twist in their design. Larger commercial wind turbines
use pitch control either passive, with the aid of centrifugal springs and levers (similar to helicopter
rotors) or by active using small electrical motors built into the blades hub to rotate it the required few
degrees. The principal disadvantages of pitch control are reliability and cost.

• Blade Construction – the kinetic energy extracted from the wind is influenced by the geometry
of the rotor blades and determining the aerodynamically optimum blade shape and design is
important. But as well as the aerodynamic design of the rotor blade the structural design is equally
important. The structural design consists of blade material selection and strength as the blades flex
and bend by the winds energy while they rotate.
Obviously, the ideal constructional material for a rotor blade would combine the necessary structural
properties of high strength to weight ratio, high fatigue life, stiffness, its natural vibration frequency
and resistance to fatigue along with low cost and the ability to be easily formed into the desired
aerofoil shape.
The rotor blades of smaller turbines used in residential applications that range in size from 100 watts
and upwards are generally made of solid carved wood, wood laminates or wood veneer composites
as well as aluminium or steel. Wooden rotor blades are strong, light weight, cheap, flexible and
popular with most do-it-yourself wind turbine designs as they can be easily made. However, the low
strength of wood laminates compared with other wood materials renders it unsuitable for blades with
slender designs operating at high tip speeds.
Aluminium blades are also light weight, strong and easy to work with, but are more expensive, easily
bent and suffer from metal fatigue. Likewise steel blades uses the cheapest material and can be
formed and shaped into curved panels following the required aerofoil profile. However, it is much
harder to introduce a twist into steel panels, and together with poor fatigue properties, meaning it
rusts, means that steel is rarely used.
The rotor blades used for very large horizontal axis wind turbine design are made from reinforced
plastic composites with the most common composites consisting of fibreglass/polyester resin,
fibreglass/epoxy, fibreglass/polyester and carbon-fibre composites. Glass-fibre and carbon-fibre
composites have a substantially higher compressive strength-to-weight ratio compared with the
other materials. Also, fibreglass is lightweight, strong, inexpensive, has good fatigue characteristics
and can be used in a variety of manufacturing processes.
The size, type and construction of the wind turbine you may need depends on your particular
application and power requirements. Small wind turbine designs range in size from 20 watts to 50
kilowatts (kW) with smaller or “micro” (20- to 500-watt) turbines be used in residential locations for a
variety of applications such electrical power generation for charging batteries and powering lights.
Wind energy is among the world’s fastest-growing sources of renewable energy as it is a clean,
widely distributed energy resource that is abundant, has zero fuel cost, emissions-free power
generation technology. Most modern wind turbine generators available today are designed to be
installed and used in residential type installations.
As a result, they are manufactured smaller and more lightweight allowing them to be quickly and
easily mounted directly onto a roof or onto a short pole or tower. Installing a newer turbine generator
as part of your home wind power system will allow you to reduce most of the higher costs of
maintaining and installing a taller and more expensive turbine tower as you would have before in the
past.