It's an interesting notion. Airplanes sweep their wings back to slide the air stream away from the drag and turbulence of the fuselage. Tip spillage -- which
is a major source of turbulence and noise -- is
increased with swept-back airfoils since lots of air migrates along the blade length. I would expect the Skystream's blades to loose nearly all lift where the curve begins; it should act like an 8ish-foot turbine because of those raked blades, and that's exactly what its (real-world) output numbers resemble. Really, at 300 RPM noise shouldn't be much of a problem whatever the blade shape.
I saw a prospectus for another residential-sized turbine with curved blades. They claimed it would be very quiet because (to paraphrase) "the curvature relieves pressures that build up on both sides of the blade." Yeah, that dreaded pressure differential. It's called lift. It's what makes the alternator go round.
Quiet blades are great -- but sometimes a turbine is quiet because it just isn't working very hard. That's the case with most VAWTs.
The trouble with SWWP is they too often begin with a marketing plan and a price point, then design backward until something resembling a wind turbine plops out. Then they hype the heck out of it, driving expectations up. It's made for a successful enterprise -- and a lot of unhappy customers. If we could marry their marketing and cost management divisions to
ARE's engineering department, life would be grand.
As for placing an expensive, utility-power-grade inverter on top of a tall metal pole.... Don't even get me started on that idea. I got a handful of Bergey rectifiers that have eaten it from lightning strikes and blowing snow. NOT a good place to stick delicate electronics. Put the fancy stuff down on the ground with a couple lightning arrestors and a grounding spike ahead of it.