A new order has just come in from near Cagliari, on the south coast of Sardinia. Benvenuti! To welcome our newest TESUP customer, we took a closer look at the island, its winds, and why a home turbine makes so much sense there.
An island shaped by the wind.
Sardinia sits in the middle of the western Mediterranean, with open sea on every side. Its most famous wind is the Maestrale, the north-westerly that sweeps across the island and can blow for days at a time. From the other side comes the Scirocco, warm air from the south-east that crosses the sea before it reaches the Gulf of Cagliari. Between them, the island is rarely still for long.
What the numbers say near Cagliari.
We looked at a full year of hourly wind data for 2025 for the plain just west of Cagliari, from the ERA5 weather reanalysis. At 10 metres above the ground, the wind reached 2 m/s or more in about 47% of all hours, and 3 m/s or more in about 31%. March was the windiest month, averaging 3.1 m/s.
The direction is the interesting part. When the wind blew at 3 m/s or more, it came from the south-east 36% of the time, from the north-west 27% and from the west 23%. In other words, the wind near Cagliari does not settle on one side. These figures describe a model grid cell at 10 metres, not a measurement on anyone’s roof, so a clear and open site can see a different picture.
Why a vertical turbine suits the Gulf.
A horizontal turbine has to turn to face every change of direction, and it loses output each time it does. A vertical-axis turbine does not care where the wind comes from. The Atlas takes wind from any side without yawing, which is exactly what a site with a north-westerly one day and a south-easterly the next needs.
For a site like this we would fit the Atlas with the Low-Wind blade set: the biggest of our three blade sets, with blades that start turning at 2 metres per second and reach their 2 kW peak inside the 2 to 20 m/s band where everyday winds actually live.
Maestrale from the north-west, Scirocco from the south-east: the Atlas does not have to choose.
About 30 cents a kilowatt-hour.
According to Eurostat, Italian households using between 2,500 and 4,999 kWh a year paid on average about €0.30 per kWh including taxes in the second half of 2025, and about €0.33 in the first half. That is a little above the EU average of about €0.29. Every kilowatt-hour a turbine makes on a breezy afternoon is one that does not come from the grid.
Flamingos, surfers and a new turbine.
Cagliari is a city that lives with the wind. Greater flamingos feed in the Molentargius lagoons right next to the city, surfers watch the forecast at Poetto, and sailors read the Maestrale before they leave the harbour. Now one more household nearby will be reading it too, this time on a turbine.
So: benvenuti, and welcome to TESUP. If you live on the island and want to know what your own site could do, the Atlas vertical wind turbine page lists all three blade sets with their wind ranges, and the Magnum horizontal wind turbine is there for open, steady sites.
Wind data: ERA5 hourly reanalysis for 2025 via Open-Meteo, grid point near Capoterra. Electricity prices: Eurostat, household consumers, 2,500 to 4,999 kWh a year, all taxes included. Hero photo: Poetto and the Sella del Diavolo, Cernegaja28, CC BY-SA 4.0. Map coastline: ISTAT boundaries via openpolis, CC BY 4.0. We have not named our customer.