I’ve always been fascinated by renewable energy, so for the last few months I’ve been building a numerical lab in Python to design and optimize a passive variable-pitch vertical-axis wind turbine (a Sharp cycloturbine). It started as just an aerodynamic solver, but it quickly grew. With some AI assistance, I added differential evolution optimizers, AST-based hashing for reproducibility, and a Streamlit dashboard. The coolest part is that I just finished optimizing the blade geometry for a 1.8-meter prototype, and the model predicts a Cp of about 0.38. I’m now moving into the hardware phase—cutting the foam blades and hooking it up to a repurposed hoverboard motor. The code is completely open-source. I'd love any feedback on the project, the UI, or the physics! Repo: https://github.com/juroc58/sharp-vawt-lab   submitted by   /u/OrneryProfit659 [link]   [comments]