We've seen a couple innovative
wind power solutions pop up, but none that claim to offer the benefits of maglev wind turbines, which use full-permanent magnets to nearly eliminate friction by "floating" the blades above the base. According to developers, the technology is capable of scaling to massive sizes, with a proposed $53M turbine able enough to replace 1000 traditional windmills and power 750 thousand homes. Additional benefits include the ability to generate power with winds as slow as three miles per hour, operational costs some 50 percent cheaper than windmills, and an estimated lifespan of 500 years. That all sounds great, but the real proof will come when these things get put to use, which may happen sooner than you'd think: Development is proceeding rapidly in both the US and China, with Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology currently building a $5M factory to produce the turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts.
posted Nov 26th 2007 3:31PM
The real question is: is it cheaper than a nuclear power plant?
A nuclear plant requires years of testing to make sure nothing goes kaplooey. At least this can be done a whole lot faster, and needs no supply (other than it being stationed in a fairly windy area).
But, we still need more nuclear plants.
Nuclear power is not cheap. Spent fuel rods have to be stored on site for 10-15 years. Prices are cheap now only because the plants are HEAVILY subsidized and disposal is done at tax payer expense. You have have to consider the amount of security that goes into protecting spent rods, all bought with tax dollars. It's not cheap and it's a multi million year expenditure of energy and resources to keep track of the waste. Yes, I meant it when I said "year." Some elements have a half-life in the tens of thousands of years, but they are constantly changing into other elements that have half-lives of many millions of years and are more dangerous than the elements they started out as. Please, educate yourself. It'll only cost you an hour of your life. http://www.nuwinfo.se/waste2007documentation
If they work right, these turbines should be a great boon. They don't require much land in their immediate vicinity, but also wouldn't benefit from being surrounded by high rises. I still like wind turbines and solar panels because they DO occupy vast tracks of land. Land that can be populated by a species other than humans.
"Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology [is] currently building a $5M factory to produce the turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts."
Let's hope that's a typo- though the original articles says the same. That or my understanding of watts is wrong.
The only safe and good-for-the-environment power sources are nuclear and solar. Wind can kill off birds (didn't it lead one species to extinction somewhere?) by sucking them in, and it can alter wind currents. Hydroelectric floods areas, ruins fish migrations, etc. Tidal generators can suck in fish. Geothermal is messy, and isn't really viable because it can only be used in certain places. Coal generators release really harmful crap into the environment, oh, and CO2. Oh, and if the water used to cool nuclear power is sent back into streams, it can fuck with the fish (but it'd be easy to stop that).
Ah, the beauty that is hard-water and pebble bed reactors. I will be happy when the world switches to hydrogen for transportation (NOT FUEL CELL, just hydrogen, which is safer than gasoline), and solar and nuclear for large-scale power generation. It will be a beautiful day.
kev,
You had me at "kaplooey".
Maybe a better question would be: how long does used wind remain lethally radioactive?
Well besides the fact that nuclear power plants produce that nasty waste, there is only enough Uran for the next 80 Years, and believe me you seriously don't want the stuff that was produced, to be reused in new powerplants that run even heavier radioactive substances.
Wind, Solar and Fusion for the way (although the last one is not that efficient and powerfull (yet))
Have a nice day.
@Jesse S
"Tidal generators can suck in fish."
"Wind can kill off birds (didn't it lead one species to extinction somewhere?) by sucking them in, and it can alter wind currents"
"Coal generators release really harmful crap into the environment, oh, and CO2."
A tidal generator sucks up a fish, so what? Planting Tall Trees Can Alter Wind Currents... Who gives a damn? Those fish regularly pass through the damn multiple times per day as part of their search for food. There is inconclusive proof that current CO2 levels have any effect on climate. CO2 makes up less than 0.0383% of the total gas in the atmosphere and man kind only contributes to .001% of that annually. The number one "warming gas" is water vapor (0.25%). Oxygen (20.946%) and Nitrogen (78.084%) are the two most common gases in the Earths atmosphere.
Utility transmission and distribution lines, the backbone of our electrical power system, are responsible for 130 to 174 million bird deaths a year
Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually
Tall building and residential house windows get in the way of wind and kill 100 million to 1 billion birds annually. Lets not even mention how many tall trees have killed birds.
Lighted communication towers kill 40-50 million per year. One case cites that 10,000 birds were killed by a communication tower in just one night alone.
Housecats kill 217,000,000 birds a year.
Commercial wind turbines-- Get this: Just 6,400 birds per year! Hell, KFC fries that many birds in less than one half hour!
Jessie, just remember that man was given dominion over the land and the animals. It's our given right to do what we like with them, for food, experimentation, transportation, work, and entertainment. Put down the dope, apparently its affected your logic.
http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Atmosphere_gas_proportions.svg
@I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY
"There is inconclusive proof that current CO2 levels have any effect on climate. CO2 makes up less than 0.0383% of the total gas in the atmosphere and man kind only contributes to 0.001% of that annually."
It's probably not worth the bother of replying to your post, but you really do need to do some more research if you are still swallowing the sort of tripe that you have trotted out above. Has it ever occurred to you that the people putting out such garbage might be plain wrong? I know that you WANT them to be right, but that isn't the same as them actually BEING right. If you look into the solid, detailed and thorough science behind all of this you wouldn't be quoting this sort of garbage any more. Go on, do your homework properly rather than just copying someone else's errors!
@Nick
Watching Al Gore and Michael Moore does not constitute homework...
sounds like it and safer
to be honest, if i was somebody @ google can you imagine the PR it would "generate" hahaha, if you funded and built your own for a town.... ie corporate adopt a town energy....
the google windfarm.....
Reason for termination of last employment:
-moved to Mountain view because it was awesome.
They should just stack them on top of each other.
Seems like that would be less efficient than just making one that is tall with a small diameter.
and put residential units in the 90' diameter core.
a $5 million dollar factory to produce $43 million dollar turbines?
Ermm.. WADUFXUP?
That $5 million facility will create turbines that generate from 400 to 5,000 watts each. Those are toys compared to a $43 million turbine like the one in the picture (At least I HOPE a turbine that generates only 5,000 watts would cost a smidge less than $43 million).
I don't see what the cost of a factory has to do with the cost of the product outputted.
You have to spend money to make money. Now please, stop being ignorant.
The $5 million dollar factory isn't building the giant 1 gigawatt powerplant (which is estimated to cost $53 million), they are building smaller scaled versions that produce 400-5000 watts, which will definitly cost a lot less.
I think the real question is, How big is this thing? It looks to be towering over the city and the helicopter seems to be so small next to it. Will it block out the sun for half of the city.
I saw this thing a few months ago being bashed to pieces by science types who seemed dead sure it couldn't produce any meaningful amount of power. I'd explain further, but their arguments where above my head.
I hate to be captain obvious but it doesn't need to be next to the city. There's this new invention called "power lines" and I hear it has quite a range.
I negative voted myself for bad grammar and misplaced reply...
5kW...that's 4~5 microwaves. You'll need one for every apartment in NYC...
Blocking out the sun isn't a bad idea---if you do it with solar cells!
Hey, there's a thought! Put solar cells on the blades so that they capture some sunlight intermittently too--that way we get more energy! And I really hope that giant windmill produces on the order of mW at least... 5 kW is measly.
the average household monthly consumption is about 1200KWh/month. So assuming 5 hours of wind a day, you'd need about a 8-10KW turbine to be independent.
Now replace all your lighting with LED, rebuild a passive solar and geothermaly heated house, plus a few other things, and you'd drop your electricity need to 500-800KWh/month. That would mean a 5KW turbine would keep you off the grid.
erm, why would you hope that it produced 500 milli-watts? just kiding i knw what you meant, but my physics teacher goes absolutely mental when you use the wrong unit.
Sweet, maybe the neighbors and I can pool our money and get one and sell the remaining electricity back to the electric company and be rich...muhahaha.
WTF model turbine are they comparing to that makes 5kW equal to "1000 traditional windmills" are they comparing windmills from holland in the 1800's?
I smell BS, and it kinda smells like vaporware. If its not, thats cool, just don't think about installing these near any beaches I go to, and good luck installing them near any houses over a million dollars near the water... ie the entire coast, I hear they have REALLY good lawyers.
Let's see...now considering that they released it on BusinessWire, eh...
You're giving engadget editors too much credit...like they know what a unit of power is. The article engadget ripped this off of has the numbers wrong too. The turbines supposedly produce 1~50 mW according to the BusinessWire post. Go poorly written articles!
@ kev
mW = milliwatt
MW = megawatt
I think you mean MW.
You're right. Brain fart!
That 1000x higher efficiency claim smells like a rat of 1000x larger size than the average rat. Unless they also discovered how to harness zero point energy and threw that in for free, eliminating mechanical friction isn't going to buy you such an efficiency increase. In the end you still have to perform work against the internal EM resistance of the generator, which will be there regardless of what kind of bearings you use.
Now, let me preface by saying I am NOT a scientist. I might qualify as an armchair physicist if you used the term very loosely.
That being said, I don't think that the maglev system is entirely about eliminating friction. That's part of it, but from my limited understanding of how maglev works, there is also a huge efficiency gain by the fact that it doesn't work like a traditional brush/bearing generator, so the EM resistance is far, far less than one of those. Now, obviously, a traditional generator is more than 0.1% efficient, so I don't think you can actually increase efficiency 1000 times without violating the first law of thermodynamics, but maybe they threw other variables into their 1000x equation. Maybe it's 3x more efficient, 11x less expensive, takes up 3x less land and can be produced 10x faster, so someone in the PR department decided that was 1000x better.
Now, let me preface by saying I am NOT a scientist. I might qualify as an armchair physicist if you used the term very loosely.
That being said, I don't think that the maglev system is entirely about eliminating friction. That's part of it, but from my limited understanding of how maglev works, there is also a huge efficiency gain by the fact that it doesn't work like a traditional brush/bearing generator, so the EM resistance is far, far less than one of those. Now, obviously, a traditional generator is more than 0.1% efficient, so I don't think you can actually increase efficiency 1000 times without violating the first law of thermodynamics, but maybe they threw other variables into their 1000x equation. Maybe it's 3x more efficient, 11x less expensive, takes up 3x less land and can be produced 10x faster, so someone in the PR department decided that was 1000x better.
@Arthur:
Well, the article does state that the purpose of the magnets is to reduce friction. From the sounds of it they're also talking about fairly simple permanent magnet levitation, the kind you find in a "discover magnetism" kit. I think the term "maglev" was just thrown in there to sound high-tech.
The thing about maglev train technology such as in the Transrapid, which is usually what is meant by maglev, is that there are actually two separate "magnetic" technologies involved: one for levitation, the other for propulsion. Neither makes use of permanent magnets, and they're both completely independent of each other (well, theoretically anyway, in reality shared use of certain components does occur). Levitation is achieved either by attracting the vehicle up to the guideway (such as in the Transrapid), or repelling it up from the guideway (such as in the Japanese maglev). The levitation itself doesn't propel the train in any shape or form, it merely provides a practically frictionless "surface" on which to glide. Propulsion is achieved through the use of linear motors which work very much like traditional motors, except the stator is unrolled into flat form and endlessly repeated for the length of the track. Other than the unusual shape it behaves very much like a regular motor, including back-emf and all. One of the main differences between a linear motor and a regular rotating one is that a linear motor cannot make use of gearing to increase its torque--its maximum strength is that of the magnetic moment between the two magnetic poles. While that is no problem with the low friction of a maglev train, it can present problems in uses such as elevators, where either a much stronger motor is needed, or many smaller ones, as compared to a regular geared motor.
400 watts is 4 oldschool incandescent lightbulbs. I sure hope that's a mistake.
For a remote cabin 400 watts might work out well. Especially if its combined with solar ...
i like the look of that, would add a futuristic element to the country side, and if they did it well, could look nice, i.e if it was near mountains, and they wanted to make them more people. maybe condition the surface of the blades to blend in?
besides, "i hate the look of wind turbines, they're a real eyesore"
so they prefer giant chimneys pouring black and white smoke into the sky's... which is the real eyesore, also, that smoke can damage their childrens health, what is this gonna do, deprive them of that wind with the changing air currents, oh no, that might do nothing to damage their health, quickly, lets give them breathing masks hooked up to an exhaust. Idiots.
Someone will have to help with the math, but if it produces 50% more power than 1000 standard wind mills and takes up 1/640 of the space, it seems like that should calculate to much more than 1000 times efficiency.
Just to clearify, the concept pictured above can produce 1 gigawatt of power, while the ones to be produced in the chinese factory are much smaller in scale and only produce 400 to 5000 watts...
Smaller versions of these could be placed on top of office towers and appartment buildings to reduce energy costs.
The future of power generation is micro-generation at the household level. Let me have one of these on the roof of my house.
And make one small enough to sit on top of my head to power my gadgets while you're at it :) And one to sit on my desk, so I can blow on it every once in a while.
How about micro-generators on every door in your house, in the office where you work too? Everytime someone opens a door it generates a wee bit of electricity (ironically to power the electric doors at the grocery store).
Sure we need these massive high capacity power generation stations, and I like the looks of this and other wind powered ideas, but get me some realistic generating capacity at home and then we're talking.
This is pure snake oil, in so many ways. One good one for starters: read the text of the article, and it turns out the ones they're building are about 1 MILLION times smaller than the one in the picture. Sure, I could take a photo of a wind turbine, photoshop it so it's as big as Mt. Everest, and announce that I've solved the worlds energy problems.
Or another: to generate the 1GW that they claim, even with a perfectly efficient system and constant 20 MPH winds, your collecting area needs to be over 1 square kilometer. So, the blades in that picture need to be around twice as large as the tallest buildings on earth. I can practically read the inventor's mind: "Is no problem. My photocopying machine has new enlarge feature. I will enlarge plans until I have the worlds largest wind power machine! Bwahahahaha!"
Looking at the picture, I'm not sure if that thing would even turn when the wind blows--the blades seem to be arranged the wrong way.
You sir are an idiot, if your claim of a 1 sq km area was true then they would only need 30 blades 30m high and 10m wide. From the looks of that picture if it was built to scale it would be MUCH larger.
Secondly think of it as the whirly birds they put on houses to vent the celling. They spin, or even as a variable prop on planes and boats. You can change the blade pitch for maximum effiency.
Do you know how big 100 acres is? It's closer to 2 square kilometers. They state that one maglev generator would require 100 acres.
Sure this thing would be massive, but I live in Canada. We have the room.
100 acres = 0.4 square km. Still huge. That is about 10 times the area of the great pyramid of giza, like 3X the size in each direction. That figure must take into account the empty space required around the turbine.
I live in Brigantine, NJ (just next to Atlantic City). Atlantic City has recently put up 5 wind turbines that are saving the city an estimated $5,000 in energy costs per day with clean energy. However, people complain that they are an "eyesore". I personally think they are a welcome addition and would love to see future innovation with wind energy come to AC. (No New Jersey jokes please.)
It should also be noted that another big complaint is from environmentalists (ironic) who claim the turbines will decimate the local bird population. My town contains a natural bird sanctuary and in the past three years there has apparently been 1 turbine related bird death...
If the birds are dumb enough to get near enough to the giant, sharp, rotating blades that it kills them, that strikes me as Natural Selection, not a bird hazard.
I don't understand why people find wind turbines an eyesore. To me they are far more beautiful than most other things people build, rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike being an example.
Bird deaths can be a genuine and serious problem with wind farms, but depend significantly on the type of turbines used, and where they are sited.
For example, it turns out that if you put the most dense wind farm in the world in the middle of the largest breeding population of golden eagles in the world, that's bad.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4222351.html
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Altamont_Pass,_California
As the articles discuss, there are solutions.
Don't feel bad, I'm from Jersey too. And when I drove to North Carolina the pizza guy was making fun of me for it, saying we pollute too much, as he was dropping his cigarette butt on the ground.
As for the bird, I call it semi-natural selection, they'll learn eventually.
Isnt that the cooling fan used in the Xbox360?
Nice! you get my comment of the day!
What would be sweet is if it was actually kind of big, and the middle part would be like a shopping mall.
Uhhh.. We have a single "windmill" here powering 1600 homes, what kind of weak-ass turbines are they using which only power 500 home each? pfft.
I do admin that the mag-lev version does look a lot neater :)
re: bird death by turbine - hell, more than that die from flying into buildings.. let's ban all the buildings! ;)
Pretty sure it said 500 THOUSAND
just wanted to clear that up
Oh great, now we'll have to import our cheap *energy* from China as well.
I think of Tron when I see that thing.. dude where is my light cycle, we need to get to the Central Processing Unit.
OMG, something is really wrong with my typing skills today :'(.
I wish people would check articles for basic plausibility before repeating marketing blurbs:
The efficiency of big wind turbines is limited by the Betz' law (about 60%). Modern wind turbines reach already 80% of this maximum. 80000% efficiency? Cool. Ball bearing have very low friction, "Maglev" won't help much there. Maybe this tech helps to build bigger wind turbines. This helps if you consider building area: you don't have to consider the necessary distance between wind turbines, if you only consider one wind turbine. But what if you want to build more than one? One can only guess from this marketing blurb.
Btw. this type of vertical axis wind turbines are usually less efficient (but their or other pros and cons to consider).
I think this marketing blurb of the hypothetical giant wind turbine is just to sell of their unrelated mini turbines. Somehow this reminds me of the news about the super efficient microwave water boiler.
Whoaaa calm down there man. Look at the picture. They have one REALLY BIG fan compared to a 1000 normal sized ones. That's where the number comes from. If you read the article they only claim a 20% greater generation capacity than a "standard" wind turbine.
Seems plausible to me and a good idea. It even looks better (aesthetically) than the normal wind turbines.
@Reader:
I am quite calm :)
No it is not plausible (to me). These vertical axis type wind turbines (don't remember the name now) are not new. They are generally less efficient, one reason is that some blade always advance into the direction of the wind, reducing the efficient wind speed. Probably you can calculate a higher nominal wattage because they run up to higher wind speeds, wind energy grows with wind speed^3. So double wind speed, eight times more power. Just need a very windy place to take the advantage.
But yes, they are somehow more aesthetically (until you have one next to your home). But this is really a marketing blurb to sell of their smaller wind mills.
Actually the vertical windmill is more efficient. It is not affected by any change in the direction of the wind, and can also use turbulent wind. This is because traditional windmills must face directly into the wind to get maximum power, while the vertical axis uses wind from any direction. Also vertical axis windmills can be placed closer together. They can even handle stronger winds without having to worry about damage.
Just because it's bigger and makes more output doesn't mean it is "1000% more efficient".
Any company that doesn't know the difference between efficiency and output probably shouldn't be selling something that requires math to create.
@Kllr Wolf:
That's a different kind of efficiency you're talking about, flexibility in wind direction and land use. The OP was talking conversion efficiency: for a given wind direction, a traditional mill facing perpendicularly into the wind will be more efficient at converting wind power into electricity for precisely the reason stated--all blades are constantly generating power, while a vertically rotating one will only have about half the blades generating power, while half are consuming power traveling into the wind. You can minimize the loss by using variable pitch and letting the blades moving into the wind pivot freely to minimize their drag like a weather vane, but in the end there are still losses, including those to the blade control mechanism.
Vestas largest production wind tyrbine is 3MW, with 5MW in testing... 4MW is not impressive.
...turbine
Forgive me tooting my own horn, but I have not only build a home size wind power unit, have shared my plans online with the rest of the world. In my experience, I think they are simply guessing about the power production and I dont think maglev is realistic on such a large scale. Possibly not on a small scale either. Too many side to side forces to deal with in addition to the levitation. I just think the cost and weight would hinder efficiency more than helping. My project is documented here if your interested: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Savonius-Wind-Turbine-or-VAWT-to-make-elec/
the bird turbine death thing was made up by those who didnt want wind turbines in their back yards. ask the bird experts or check under wind turbines for bird bodies. it really is a hoax.
bird death is not a myth. One of the first large wind turbine developments was at Altamont Pass in California, which is a very popular spot for birds. The small, fast-spinning turbines of the day killed (and still kill) a fair number of raptors. modern windmills at locations that are not on bird migration pathways kill a lot fewer. In any case, as others have pointed out, buildings kill many more birds.
I wonder what happened to that concept of the wind wall with a dozen small turbines that could be put on a fire escape. It could only make 500-100W or so but that would be enough to run a few lightbulbs and a computer.
This concept reminds me of the things they put on top of exhaust vents. In cleveland they put a small wind turbine and a few prototype soloar panels in front on the science center. It makes a small ammount of power but not enough to drop the center from the grid.
Wind power isn't efficient enough to be practical. In order to genrate enough power you have to give up too much land to make it worthwhile. Plus is is an eyesore, not as much as a giant cooling tower but at least you only need one or two of those in a remote area. Nuclear pebble bed reactors are still the most efficient and practical way to generate a large ammount of power.
Even so I wouldn't mind tossing a few of these small wind generators on the top of my apartment building, but they would have to cost less than $300 each and generate enough power to run all of my appliances. My electric bill is $25 a month so the cost of the generator needs to be less than the cost of getting power from the grid for me to want it.
Here's what I don't get and excuse my understanding of blade dynamics but surely if it looks like that it won't turn as wind is blowing on the whole thing so each side encounters equal force therefore it won't spin?
Don't forget that the blades are differently oriented on each "side" so that on one side they catch the wind, whereas on the other side the wind flows past them. If the blades have variable incidence the drag on the non-driving side can be minimised whereas the driving side can extract a high percentage of the energy from the wind.
Ok, if these numbers are right (and I think this is all BS) a single turbine that costs $53 million could power 750k homes. Then you should easily be able to get everyone to cough up $100 each which would equal $75 million. This would be plenty to build the turbine and maintain it for at least a few years all for around the price of one month's power bill.
400 watts? heh, I can make a turbine that'll produce that. In fact, I think I will, with blackjack, and hookers
In fact, forget the turbine and the blackjack!
"Mommy? Why are they building a giant vacuum cleaner air filter in our town?"
Does it blend? Looks like a giant lampshade.
Yes, I'm sure it does blend. It blends cars, boats, Costco warehouses, and anything else dumb enough to get too close to it.
How is this low ranked? It's genius, you people need a sense of humor.
Not sure if this has been asked yet, but does this take the power needed to levitate that crap into account?
It´s all in the magnets. That is the key to all of this.
What the Germans use in the running of their new high-tech maglev trains. Seems the Chinese appropriated the idea and applying it to windmills.
Hope it works!
Get these things built already! If anyone's ever been on I10 between Indio and San Bernadino, would know it would be perfect spot to put theses. Just replace all those old scary GE windmills with a few of these and you can power all of LA LA
Enough jokes. Suppose I said this think would cost you $10k and save you 400 bucks a month on electricity. By law the power company has to buy your generated electricity up to what you use per year.
THINK SMALLER! A small conventional, family sized-windmill does have major friction loss, gear-up inefficiencies.....They do not work unless your local wind speed is 12 mph or more. There is much energy at lower speeds but no device to harness it. If this does the trick down to 3 mph, it's a HOME RUN. Let the Chinese (or anyone) build them cheap enough for a 2-5 year ROI (return on investment) and you'd be fool not to put one on your house with a 15-year mortgage!
We are forgetting something. The energy that can be taken from the wind is at most the energy in the swept area of the turbine. 1000 conventional electric utility turbines (with, say, 100' rotors) have a swept area of 1000 * pi & 100*100 = 30,000,000 ft2. So this ONE mega-maglev turbine is going to have a swept area near 30 MILLION square feet, whatever its efficiency? That's a mile high and a mile wide. I'd say we are not just talking vaporware, but interstellar vacuunware. It would be like spinning 10 Golden Gate bridges on one axis, cost more than a pile (pun intended) of nuclear plants to build, and it would destroy itself in the shakedown test.
Aw, what the heck, lets go for it! 8^@
Yay! Well done scientists/engineers/whoever funds this.
From what I can see in the article it no where says "1000x efficieny" that's just engadget's headline.
Noise?
Birds?
Pressure? (If the wind comes in at one direction, wouldnt the wind pushing on the right side cancel out the wind pushing on the left side, and vice versa. Wouldnt that make the turbine stationary?)
i'll take five please...
i dont see why we should go nuclear b/c they cost more need a lot more security take up more land and they create nuclear waste. This only needs 3mph of wind to work and its easier to build cost less takes up less land and overall just looks better. Lets see what the oil companies do with this.
What what if someone flips it to "Evil?"
A giant device that collects energy can also dispel it yes? If this monstrosity starts popping up all over our planet and someone makes them start spinning like mad, tornadoes and twisters will erupt everywhere spewing knots of chaos!
...and they will do it all for one mD! That's million dollars for those armchair evil scientists.
One armchair evil scientist to another...
Please refer to earlier discussion in the thread about abbreviations.
mD= milli-dollars $0.001
MD= million dollars $1,000,000
Don't sell yourself short.
What they need to do with those big blades is to mount solar panels on top of them for MORE POWER!!
All the science geeks are having a field day with this one - chopping down us mortals with every comment!
All I know is I'd be one step closer to my own little residence far off the grid in Texas.
Your little residence wouldn't just have to be far off the grid in Texas, it'd have to be in an alternate universe where the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't apply. Permanent magnets can't be used to generate more energy, only to return some of the energy stored in the magnets during their creation. Any time you hear "permanent magnets" and "increased efficiency" or "increased energy output" or whatever in the same sentence together, it's snake oil.
Yes it is snake oil. Still they did not claim the magnets were generating energy, only reducing friction (which is possible if they are used to counteract gravity).
Will last 500 years? And to my great X 20, grandchildren, I will my Maglev Wind Turbine.