You should have a look at the Lux Windpower site. http://www.luxwindpower.com

Glen has spent the last number of years developing a vertical axis wind turbine that actually works and addresses the shortcomings of previous attempts at VAWTs. His research has also focused on driving down the cost of the rotor on the turbine.

He has been working with a 40KW proof of concept prototype and is currently securing funding for a larger commercial scale prototype.

With a number of basic, but fundamental design changes from “traditional” VAWTs Glen has come up with a potential game changer.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/12/wind-power-as-a.html
“A study conducted by Stanford University confirmed that interconnected multiple wind farms can be used to provide baseload electric power. Interconnecting wind farms with a transmission grid reduces the power swings caused by wind variability and makes a significant portion of it just as consistent a power source as a coal power plant.”

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/december5/windfarm-120507.html
“This study implies that, if interconnected wind is used on a large scale, a third or more of its energy can be used for reliable electric power, and the remaining intermittent portion can be used for transportation, allowing wind to solve energy, climate and air pollution problems simultaneously,” said Archer, the study’s lead author and a consulting assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and research associate in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. ”

“As one might expect, not all locations make sense for wind farms. Only locations with strong winds are economically competitive. In their study, Archer and Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, evaluated 19 sites in the Midwestern United States with annual average wind speeds greater than 6.9 meters per second at a height of 80 meters above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines. Modern turbines are 80 to 100 meters high, approximately the height of a 30-story building, and their blades are 70 meters long or more.

The researchers used hourly wind data, collected and quality-controlled by the National Weather Service, for the entire year of 2000 from the 19 sites. They found that an average of 33 percent and a maximum of 47 percent of yearly-averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable baseload electric power. These percentages would hold true for any array of 10 or more wind farms, provided it met the minimum wind speed and turbine height criteria used in the study.”