Our Tech
Energy transition powered by wind
The growing demand for renewable energy has driven significant interest in wind systems that can operate efficiently across a wider range of environments. Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are particularly well suited to urban, rural and offshore applications because they can capture wind from any direction and can operate effectively in variable and turbulent airflow.
Traditional VAWT designs, however, can face challenges around self-starting, efficiency and control across changing wind conditions. Flag Turbines has developed a patented cycloidal VAWT architecture that addresses these limitations through automatic variable blade pitch, low rotational speed and high torque.
Our research and development journey began in 2019 and has now progressed through 13 generations and approximately 25,000 hours of testing. This iterative development process led to the core patented technology behind the Flag Turbine: the Cycloidal Turbine.
Darrieus Wind Turbine
Named after French inventor Georges Darrieus, this lift-based VAWT typically uses curved or straight blades rotating around a vertical axis. Darrieus turbines can achieve good aerodynamic efficiency, but can struggle with self-starting and changing wind conditions.
Savonius Wind Turbine
This type consists of two or more scooped blades, resembling a “S” shape when viewed from above. It operates based on drag rather than lift, making it less efficient but more reliable at lower wind speeds and self-starting.
The core of the design
Flag Turbines takes a different approach to conventional fixed-pitch VAWTs. Our patented cycloidal architecture uses automatic variable blade pitch to continuously adapt each blade throughout the rotation, allowing the turbine to respond efficiently to changing wind conditions.
This enables a combination of strong starting torque, low rotational speed and omnidirectional operation without requiring a yaw system. The blade-pitching mechanism sits at the heart of our patented technology and is designed to address many of the limitations associated with conventional VAWTs in variable and turbulent wind conditions.
Flag Turbines combines the strongest characteristics of established VAWT concepts within a new cycloidal, variable-pitch architecture.
Outcome
The Flag Turbines architecture delivers strong starting torque and high energy capture across a wide range of wind conditions. Its patented variable-pitch mechanism continuously adjusts each blade throughout every rotation, maintaining the optimum angle of attack to maximize useful lift and torque while minimizing drag.
Combined with a slow-rotating, high-torque rotor and purpose-designed direct-drive generator, this creates a highly responsive turbine capable of operating efficiently in turbulent and constantly changing wind conditions. The direct-drive architecture also removes the need for a conventional gearbox, reducing mechanical complexity, vibration and maintenance requirements.
The result is a scalable cycloidal wind turbine architecture that combines high aerodynamic performance with low rotational speed, omnidirectional operation and a comparatively low physical profile, allowing the same core technology to be applied across land-based, rooftop and floating environments, with a clear development path from distributed generation through to future MW-scale applications.
