+ Maglev Wind Turbines: Big & Small

Magnetic Levitation (maglev) has been used and studied for years in hopes to reduce friction and improve efficiencies. While this technology has been limited to train and rail applications, renewable energy may be the true application maglev was waiting for. Vertical axis wind turbines can take advantage of maglev technology and greatly improve efficiency, noise and power output. Plans released by Maglev were recently unveiled at the Wind Power Asia exhibition in Beijing.

The proposed plan calls for a one gigawatt maglev wind turbine which can power approximately 750,000 homes. The advantage of the proposed maglev wind turbine is that the space required would be less than 100 acres, while the equivalent space required for traditional wind turbines would be about 64,000 acres. The total estimated cost for the proposed maglev turbine is $53 million dollars.

For a smaller scale, maglev wind turbines are also available for residential, commercial, and farm use by Mag-Wind. Mag-Wind offers a unit with a footprint of 13 square feet, and is recommended to be installed on the roof. The roof allows the unit to take advantage of what Mag-Wind has coined, “the roof effect.” This essentially increases the effective area of the propellers, which will improve efficiency by allowing more air to be forced to spin its turbine. The advantage of small scale maglev is that the start up spin speed for such a turbine is much lower than traditional horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines of similair scale and power output. Whatever the scale, maglev may play a key role in vertical axis wind turbines in the future.