The wind turbine floats on a magnetic cushion with the aid of a linear synchronous motor. This technology eliminates all friction and delivers maximum wind energy directly to the power generators. Since the Maglev wind turbine blades capture all of the wind, it is possible to generate electricity for less than one cent per kilowatt hour.
“Eliminates all friction” is a telltale sign of snakeoil being peddled. Anyone who would make such a claim in company literature is the equivalent of Alberto Gonzalez: either incredibly dumb or completely disingenuous. You pick which is the worse of the two (God only knows that Alberto can’t….)
One reason I posted this was to await your (quite well reasoned) debunking comment. 🙂
There is plenty of snake oil in this world, but the issue of acreage is an important one. It is the reason why some environmentalists are backing nuclear energy! This sounds far fetched, but, hey, the alternative sources are not quite contenders yet. They are merely sources of temporary relief.
A magnetic cusion… at least every possibility is being considered in this green revolution.
The claim is essentially correct. Like mag-lev trains, there is no contact between any solid surfaces. Current generation disk drives operate in much the same way, except they float on a cushion of air when operating at full RPMs. Of course, disk drives still consume power because there is still drag due to air attaching itself to the boundary layer of the disk platters, but for a wind turbine this is not an issue.
They are not making a claim here that the design is free of losses, as there will be aerodynamic losses attendant with producing lift over and airfoil, but it is you Joe who is ignorant here. It’s hard to learn anything when your mind is already made up.
As for Payam’s claim that acreage is an important issue, he’s obviously never traveled in the US Great Basin where there is nothing but acreage. Where the alternatives are wind, they are very much contenders, as soon as world-wide turbine manufacturing capacity starts to whittle down the 18-24 month backlog of orders. Wind is cheaper than coal, far cheaper than clean coal, and massively cheaper than nuclear.
Nuclear is incapable of operating in perfect safety for 25,000 human generations, creates huge amounts of toxic waste in its uranium mine tailings, and is a target for every terrorist organization foreign and domestic. It is also not clear that nuclear is economically viable when one slip-up means your 10 billion dollar installation is now a red-hot piece of nuclear waste that will never produce another dollar of revenue.
“the US Great Basin where there is nothing but acreage.”
Careful, now: we like our acreage. Sure there’s plenty of room for wind turbines, but let’s not get too cavalier or they’ll be wanting to put nuclear waste here. (Oh, wait, they already DO want to put nuclear waste here.)