| By :
Roger Brown
One of the great things about renewable energy projects is the fact that so many new options are coming on the market every day. It wasn't too many years ago that there were just a few projects found in the back of science magazines that you could take advantage of to make energy at your home. Now, all that has changed. With the new awareness of shrinking oil supplies and coal supplies, as well as the nightly news that reports how more and more people are investing in home energy projects, it has become commonplace for people to look into residential energy options, sometimes even before they purchase their houses. Although there are new options coming on the market all the time, the most popular 2 types of wind turbines for homes are the vertical axis wind turbine and the horizontal axis wind turbine. Practically speaking these 2 devices couldn't be any more different. As a matter fact they're only similarity is that both spin when the wind blows. 1st on the agenda is the vertical axis wind turbine… This device is very aesthetically pleasing and is coming into its own in the urban market. People in cities don't have a lot of options about where they install a device like this. So, they have to make do with the residential real estate that is available to them. The vertical wind turbine is very aesthetically pleasing. Manufacturers have gone to great pains to make sure that these devices blend in with their environments and don't cause much of a stir in the community that they happen to be placed in. However, they are quite inefficient when compared to options that you have with horizontal wind turbines. Because of their ability to function on a roof and deal with wind that is very chaotic, they are less efficient. They do not seek the most prevailing wind instead, they turn in whatever direction the turbulence happens to blow them. In contrast, the horizontal wind device is hyper-efficient. With its tail section that orients the rotor path into the direction of the most prevailing wind, you can always be guaranteed that you're extracting the most energy that you can from the wind environment where you have to place the wind turbine. However these devices are not as aesthetically pleasing as the vertical residential wind turbines and therefore may invites and negative feedback from the local community because they look like something you'd find on a farm in the middle of Texas for example, and that's not something many people in cities and neighborhoods want to display. In summary, wind turbines for homes take on 2 forms for the most part-vertical axis devices and horizontal axis devices. Both have their role, but you have to always be careful to match the specific wind turbine to the environment that you're going to place it in if you want to have a successful project.
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