This paper presents a study on the effect of solidity and airfoil profile on the performance of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs). A 1.1 kW commercially viable Darrieus VAWT was studied using ANSYS Fluent. Four different airfoils - NACA 0012, NACA 0015, NACA 0030 and AIR 001 were considered in the analysis. The tip speed ratios (lambda) were varied from 1 to 2.5 with an incoming wind velocity of 10 m/s. It was observed that NACA 0030 performed better at lower values of lambda due to long duration of attached flow; while NACA 0012 performed better at lambda > 1.8 with a wider range of lambda. The shed vortex dissipates much faster for thinner airfoils than for thicker airfoils at higher values of lambda. Two bladed VAWTs generated more power than the three bladed turbines. This indicated that turbines with lower solidity perform better at high lambda. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.