I've been rooting for Ridgeblade to succeed for a while now. Their system mounts squirrel cage fans along the ridge line, where they harvest the wind forced up and over roofs. This allows them to use relatively small fans and leverage the roof's larger cross sectional area.
It pairs well with solar as they are unaffected by rooftop installations, but they can share the same electrical infrastructure.
The fans are reportedly very quiet and have a minimal visual impact, so they are probably the most NIMBY friendly wind option I have seen.
The most obvious application I can think of would be large pole barns on ag land. Farmers don't care which way their hog barn's roof is oriented, so they could optimize for solar and average wind direction.
As the article points out, rural farms are ideal candidates for smaller wind turbines since they have tons of space and relatively high energy needs. Harry Metcalfe is a British farmer who has both solar and wind installed on his farm and regularly posts updates about his entire farming operations to youtube. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but I appreciate his perspective as someone actually drilling and harvesting crops.
[+] [-] amdolan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luizsantana|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theluketaylor|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI84cFcF5ew
[+] [-] mcbishop|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luizsantana|2 years ago|reply