The short height is a serious problem. I think we can make some conclusions about the power output for a given material input. Based on the the images, my assu

The short height is a serious problem. I think we can make some conclusions about the power output for a given material input. Based on the the images, my assumptions are: 100m mast and 80m blades; for the vertical turbines, a radius of 50m. The blades look to be lighter weight, but the mast looks heaver weight, so say the two styles use similar amounts of materials. Also, windspeed is logarithmic with height. Wind power goes as the cube of wind velocity over the swept area. With my assumptions, the vertical turbine outputs about 2.7MW, while the horizontal turbine outputs about 8.4MW. The reason is height: it helps to have the blades sweep more higher altitudes wind, where it's faster. These might be easier to pack tightly into a windfarm, where the metric that matters is W/m^2. But most of us care about W/kg because that is proportional to W/$: the winner looks to be horizontal turbines because they reach higher. A hybrid of horizontal behind vertical might be interesting. There are diminishing returns to how "deep" you can make your windfarm: the trailing edge suffers from turbulence from leading edge, and these could work better in turbulence.