Recent development of vertical axis wind turbine: a promising solution

Abstract

There is crucial need for clean and sustainable energy supplies nowadays. In recent years, wind energy is considered one of the most promising energy sources. Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWT) has been the widely practiced type, whereas Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) is the lesser known type. To harvest wind energy at higher height, tremendous advancements have been progressed in the wind turbine technology with boosted size and capacity, as well as lighter components to achieve cost effectiveness and technical efficiency. Some of the recent findings revealed the potential of VAWT in future development. This paper aims to describe the recent development of VAWT and its merit over the conventional HAWT. The reasons driving the market to investigate the feasibility of using VAWT again are discussed, as well as the limitation of its future development. Finally, the feasibility of using VAWT in future wind power industry is evaluated. It is concluded that VAWT has significant development potential in future market of producing efficiency wind energy.