Perhaps its just my bitterness at loosing Chevron's willyoujoinus.com's Energyville game. . .but I stand by the fact that they disregarded the current value of renewable energy too much. It seems to me that wind, at the very least, will soon be competitive and perhaps more than competitive with traditional fuel sources. Backing up my claim, ENN (the Environmental News Network) sent me a little piece this morning (and by morning I mean noon) about a new wind turbine, called the Maglev turbine which may increase wind power efficiency, decrease operating costs and revolutionize traditional turbine design.
The Maglev turbine is different from most other designs because its turbines are vertically oriented and are nearly freefloating. The turbines rely on magnetic power in order to stay in position, and this magnetism also decreases the (usually) inevitable loss of power due to friction. It is also able to tap relatively gentle winds, a current stumbling block for the technology. Pretty nifty. The company claims that Maglev turbine could power 175,000 homes while only taking up one acre of space. This is in comparison to the 100 traditional turbines which would generate an equivalent amount of power, taking up far more space.
However, you know me, always the cynic. So, I will just mention that while there are a number of blogs covering this story, its representation in more legitimate channels is limited. For example, you need a username and password to access the actual website of the Maglev corporation - maybe because they are still trying to keep the technology under wraps?
So far, only the Chinese have taken Maglev up on its offer and begun construction of the turbine. This may be because although the company claims that the operating costs of the machinery are low, the initial investment of building the turbine is really, really high. Which brings up another point - the magnets used to suspend the turbines are rare and also used in computers, a competing market. In fact, the magnets themselves are not a renewable resource.
Just to note - Magnetic levitation systems have been used in the past, largely to power trains. Currently, there are functioning Maglev trains in Shanghai and Japan. However, the technology has never much caught on past that point due to high initial capital costs and the difficulty of building an entirely new infrastructure for the trains.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Vertical Wind Power, fluke or future?
Labels:
Energyville,
maglev,
maglev turbine,
wind energy
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2 comments:
Chasing specific technologies is a fool's errand. Technology advances as you use an item. Wind technology advances as you use wind power. The exact technology that will be used in a wind turbine is hard to predict; the fact that some improvement will be made is easy to predict.
Across a wide range of technologies, costs drop nearly 20% whenever production doubles. Costs drop in half whenever production increases by a factor of 10. For wind, we can be fairly confident that production will increase by another factor of 10 and drop costs in half. For solar, we can be reasonably confident that production will increase by a factor of 100 and prices drop by a factor of 4. For coal, we can be fairly confident that production of power plants won't increase nearly as significantly and costs will hardly budge.
VAWTs (vertical axis wind turbines) are both efficient and quiet, making them more suitable for energy production in residential areas than previous wind-based renewable energy technologies. Many current VAWT models resemble eggbeaters, with two blades attached to a central shaft, which is in turn anchored in a power generator. Others have a number of large, flat blades protruding from the central axis; and still others have a helix of extremely light plastic surrounding the axis. They typically stand between two and five feet in height and the best ones are able to attain 30 – 60% efficiency, depending on where they are located.
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