Drove past this thing the other day and my eyes about popped out of my head. I thought someone had come to claim the $100 VAWT prize I offered here a few years ago.
Anyway, I went back with camera in hand and the owner was in the process of hooking it up to the grid through an Aurora inverter. Crazy thing was, he was letting it fly unloaded in about a 15 MPH wind, at least that's what he told me. Maybe it protects itself from overspeed, maybe the owner was doing something stupid, I dunno.
It was a very impressive turbine, the tower is 28 feet tall and the thing is supposed to be rated at 5.5KW at 30MPH It's made by Wepower and looked like it had enough swept area that the rating might be accurate. I went up and put a hand on the tower with it flying and felt no vibrations at all. My cursory investigations showed that the thing cost about $25,000, plus installation, plus inverter. Not exactly homebrew material but the winged part itself didn't look all that complicated. I wondered if an enterprising fellow could make an axial flux alternator for such a beast.
Anyway, I'm planning on dropping back by and seeing how much power it makes. I took a short crappy video of it flying and uploaded it here. I hope it works!
http://tinypic.com/r/2rww954/5