Review on Aerodynamic Performance Evaluation Of Straight Blade Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

As the energy crisis is getting severe in the world it will be important to investigate alternative methods of generating power in ways different than, fossil fuels. In fact, one of the biggest sources of energy is all around us all of the time, the wind. Currently, horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) dominate the wind energy market due to their large size and high power generation characteristics. However, vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) are capable of producing a lot of power, and offer many advantages for small-scale and domestic applications. One drawback of DARRIEUS type VAWT is their inability to reliably self-start at low tip speed ratio. The details of different configurations and performance evaluation techniques along with the major findings of researchers on vertical axis wind turbines are reviewed in this paper. The main purpose of the study described here is to investigate effect of different design parameter on performance evaluation of VAWT.