Design Options to Improve the Dynamic Behavior and the Control of Small H-Darrieus VAWTs

H-VAWTs or straight blades VAWTs are the most common turbine architecture employed for small VAWTs. The manufacture of straight, constant chord blades, coupled with the transport advantages, make this choice technologically simpler, compared to curved (eggbeater) type or curved-bent (Gorlov) type, allowing a large selection of materials, and design solutions. Recently, the strategies to accomplish the task of zero-emission buildings identified wind energy exploitation in the urban environment as one of the most promising. Micro and mini wind turbines installed on buildings (BAWT—building-augmented wind turbines) are considered the candidate technology after that of photovoltaic panels; under certain conditions, these technologies can be combined to obtain the maximum natural resources exploitation in the urban environment. VAWT, compared to HAWT, would ideally perform better in the fast-changing, turbulent winds, typical of the built environment. Additionally, its 3D shape favors a better architectonic integration with the volumes of the building. Nevertheless, despite these claimed advantages, this architecture did still not come to the expected fruition and experience, which revealed that the stochastic nature of the wind resource in the built environment determines a quite challenging context, reflecting not only the structural endurance, but also the operations and the annual energy production. These site characteristics stress the detrimental effect of the high polar inertia of this architecture hampering, be it a reduction in the acceleration and deceleration capability of the rotor, the required adaptation of the rotational speed to the varying wind conditions, or compromising any form of robust control. This leads to poor aerodynamic performance and potential structural damages. This paper contributes to mitigating the issue of the high rotor polar inertia of the H-VAWT without affecting other essential design requirements (strength, performances, needs of smooth control). The work identifies the design parameters governing the rotor acceleration and deceleration and develops a rational design procedure aimed at improving the H-VAWT control and performance.