The Maglev Wind Turbine Powers 750 Thousand Homes

This Maglev Wind Turbine Powers 750 Thousand Homes. Thats right, 750000. Thats more than one entire power station. One of these wind turbines requires less than 100 acres.

The figure given is under optimum wind conditions. The turbine uses maglev bearings for zero friction. It uses similar technology to the maglev trains in Japan.

Several of these in a high wind area like of the coast of Florida would produce a lot of energy.

Some people have commented that it would weigh a lot because it is the size of a building. Well if you made the vanes from a low weight material like thin fibreglass or something similar it wouldn't be a problem.

Other people say it would kill a lot of birds, well not if you built a frame around it and covered it in some kind of net.

The American company that designed it have working turbines and there is one being built in China.

More info, data and science at:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/colossal_magnet.php

Please feel free to rate, comment, subscribe or post a video response.

For a great social networking site go to:

http://r.yuwie.com/thekerminator

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Maglev
• Wind
• Turbine
• Power
• Electricity
• Renewable
• Energy

[upajos]

@helicopterpilot88 Sure, when I'm at the controls of a Robbie or Piper Arrow. However, my house is on the ground in a wind-sheltered area surrounded by mountains.  That wind turbine would need to be on a 1000-foot tower to do any good.

[OrangeCrusader]

But, that said, if it were located where it'd see such high wind speeds (Dodge City, Kansas, and we'll say Florida for its hurricane exposure), it'd be half destroyed after a tornado or hurricane due to flying debris and the relatively fragile composite construction. However, locating it in a less dangerous area would either mean it's extremely remote/inaccessible, or has lower wind speeds and thus makes less actual power.

[OrangeCrusader]

@helicopterpilot88 I'm sure it could be built, and would make a bit of energy, but the only times you'd see 1GW output would be during extremely rare (80mph rated) weather, like hurricane Irene (80mph), with the US's windiest city averaging 13.9mph. The cost to engineer and build this thing out of current technology and composites would cost well into the billions, with yearly maintenance in the millions. That's an awful lot of money when it'd output only 17% of that rating on average

[OrangeCrusader]

The technology to to handle that much simply doesn't exist yet, unless you astronomically scale up existing turbine technology, at exponential cost, the R&D would run into the hundreds of millions. The structural demands of this idea are also sky-high, that's a huge amount of composites that would require frequent maintenance since it needs to be light and thin, and thus more fragile, or end up impractically heavy). Simply scaling up existing stuff isn't necessarily a good idea.

[OrangeCrusader]

@helicopterpilot88 Apples vs. oranges. Those sources use energy that is much more easily controlled and consistent (nuclear fission and stored potential energy of water) than a wind power plant would be. Near-zero friction or not, that's a lot of energy that has to be available reliably and consistently, as it would weigh several hundred tonnes, even if an array of composite materials is used. At 1 GW it would be 100x more powerful than our largest HAWT turbines currently being built/planned.

[helicopterpilot88]

i agree that it would be quite a challenge, and not exactly practical, but indeed effective if constructed.

[helicopterpilot88]

@OrangeCrusader with drag acting to the inverse square to lift. That said, useful work can be done at nearly any radius during operation, even in light winds. If wind speed then doubled, the force would qaudruple, so it is easy to see how effective it could be. Looking at these basic relationships it is obvious that enough kinetic energy could easily be available to produce the power required to generate a near equivalent output, limited of course by the efficiency of the generator.

[helicopterpilot88]

@OrangeCrusader Would you say as astronomical as um, i don't know how about a hydroelectric damn. Or a controlled nuclear reaction? I'm gonna say electromagnetic induction is pretty straight forward. We have put men on the moon and sent lander to mars and probes beyond the furthest reaches of our solar system, i think we could get it done. force= mass x acceleration. work=Force x Distance. Power= Work/Time. Lift= coefficient of lift x surface area x 1/2 mass x Velocity squared.

[helicopterpilot88]

@rawheas sometimes being a cheapskate is a false economy in itself.

[helicopterpilot88]

@upajos ever heard of winds aloft?