I've always had sort of a soft spot for the Vertical Axis Wind Turbines because of the advantages they offer. Unfortunately, most of them such as the Savonius aren't very efficient but do offer low wind characteristics. About a year ago I was emailed a patent of a VAWT that was a bit different. This one used the "Venturi effect" to duct air around the wings. After reading through the patent I decided to build one and see if It was any better or worse than some of the others out there. As it worked out it did outperform the Savonius but still seemed a bit low on the overall efficiency. I started searching for any others that used this principal and found one other like it. I ended up building this one also and found similar characteristics but this one also seemed a bit low on the efficiency return, still it did outperform the Savinous again.

I started playing around with small units and built a coffee can model which ended up running at 700 rpm and was named the "700 RPM Coffee can". It really didn't make much power being as small as it was and was basically cut and duct taped together. Below shows a picture of the original coffee can experiment... If you decide to try this be advised the metal is very sharp and you should wear gloves as well as observing all safety precautions...

Step 1: Vertical Wind Power

One big way that you can help is to cut down on the use of energy - shut off the lights when you aren’t in the room, try carpooling to work and look to use natural commodities to reduce the burdens placed on this earth.

Clean energy can be harnessed to produce electricity more cheaply than conventional sources. While the historic demand for electricity has increased at a rate of two to ten percent per year, electric utilities have been unable to meet this growing energy demand or support customers’ needs for reliable service. The premise of on-site energy or “distributed generation” is to move to smaller and more flexible alternatives developed with environmental forethought, fuel efficiency and consumer utility.