Nice article, as always from you Desiree, thanks for posting. I am doing a little study on the building where I live, in a town complex of 64 flats, to see how it might be solar powered. Currently we seem to be just short of the roof space needed to supply all our needs from solar backed by hydrogen, which is the golden energy Use Case for all society which I see from my analyses. Around the Northernmost edge of our roof is a narrow area not useful for panels. That is also the area most exposed to wind. But it is enough to support a row of vortex turbines, which I guess wouldn't look too bad there, whilst maybe providing that last little bit of power needed to supplement the solar panels provision.
But something fundamental about those turbines bothers me a little; the acoustic noise of them must be significant.
We already know in this building that noise on any part of the building framework transmits to all of us, as if it was in our flats, which are otherwise pretty well sound insulated.
I appreciate your article for making me think about vortex turbines in my community installation anyway, and will research to confirm whether or not noise from them, bolted onto our roof could be a problem, somehow I can't imagine them being silent at their base fitting.
It might be kind of funny, for about 5 minutes, thinking that weird noise was the sound of money whizzing into our bank accounts, but after about ten minutes we would be ripping them down I think :)