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224 Comments
- drachemorder, on 10/10/2007, -7/+168But it's not quite enough to power a Flux Capacitor.
- fhernand, on 10/10/2007, -10/+112let me know when they get it to 1.21 GW so we can hook up a flux capacitor
- MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -2/+65You must be going at least 88 mph before you engage the flux capacitor.
- CanadaMan87, on 10/10/2007, -1/+52Where we're going, we don't need roads.
- Andrej73, on 10/10/2007, -3/+53tipical coal power plant is 0.5 GW
so its HUGE - ItsGus, on 10/10/2007, -2/+44Great Scott!
- motheroats, on 10/10/2007, -3/+39this will be the amount to power an intel xeon in 5 years.
- JT114881, on 10/10/2007, -2/+36Did anyone else, upon clicking this article, know that "1.21 gigawatts" was going to be SOMEWHERE in the comments?
- thegsa, on 10/10/2007, -2/+31Whoa, this is heavy.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+29arent they the same guys who had the magnetic levitation wind turbine thing you put on top of your house, with lots of photoshop mockups, collected lots of investment money, but never an actual product.
- PabloMac, on 10/10/2007, -1/+20As much as this makes great sense (and it does), the NIMBY folks will shoot it down.
- zonk3r, on 10/10/2007, -2/+19That's not an eye sore at all. Put two, no three of those in my backyard.
- SomGuye, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17Anyone else think that it looks like a giant paper fuel filter?
- igutekunst, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18...requires less than 100 acres... Oh, that's kind of small...
- sanman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16I think they need to wire the turbine to the clock tower, to get more energy
- Murphious, on 10/10/2007, -5/+19What the hell is a gigawatt!?
- colonelpanic, on 10/10/2007, -4/+17Wind energy is THE ideal energy source. After researching available alternatives for my term paper, I've found that wind energy has the best potential based on costs and efficiency when compared to other energy sources such as tidal, geothermal, and solar. This design seems near perfect on paper, as maglev technology will allow the turbine to have nearly zero friction or resistance, allowing it to spin at higher speeds and generate more power. The only thing I would question is the ability to put up with poor weather conditions.
- Chenny, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Movie title: Runaway Wind Turbine
- strictnein, on 10/10/2007, -3/+151. One would assume less than it would create otherwise it's pointless.
2. I have some land for sale next door to a nuclear power plant in Japan. Want to buy it? - redfox2600, on 10/10/2007, -5/+171. How much power would it take to levitate this thing?
2. Would a nuclear power plant generate more energy for around the same space? - PabloMac, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12As stated in the article: "The company also points out that building a single huge turbine like this reduces construction and maintenance costs, and it requires less land space than hundreds of conventional turbines."
- Herbigradus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11It's supposed to use permanent magnets for levitation so 0 electrical input. Still not sure if this idea is feasible though.
- orlyfactor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Just don't buy any Plutonium from the Libyans and claim to be making a bomb...they might really want it!
- bradg2, on 10/10/2007, -4/+14It's a line from back to the future. Idiot.
- Atomic1fire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9in fact
http://www.ourecohouse.info/blog/?p=15
only a million birds die from windmills
as opposed to 50 to a 100 million for other things - RajMahal77, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9On their site http://www.magturbine.com/maglevwindturbine.html they say that the turbine can operate in wind speeds exceeding 80 mph, has a ONE YEAR ROI (Return on Investment), and on another page on their site, they say that they can PRODUCE electricity for ONE CENT per kWh. If their figures are even remotely true (which the physics of maglev technology may prove to be accurate) then look out world because this company could become the next GE.
- CDoug03, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Read the Foundation/Empire series by Issac Asimov and be done with it. Geothermal turbines are the way of the future.
Though this is a damn good idea. - eleusis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8so, how the hell does it work? the article is fairly light on technical details
- ChrisGranger, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Cats kill more birds than wind turbines.
- Natfly, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9For a comparison to a nuclear power plant, the North Anna nuclear power plant in VA is on a 1075 acre area and puts out over 1.8 gigawatts.
- shawnz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Why is everyone here being dugg down? It's a fact that "jigga" is the correct pronunciation of "giga"...
- smartalecks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7i think it looks alot better than a coal factory...
- TheFunnyDigger, on 10/10/2007, -3/+9I want one.
- abdrahman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7compared to coal plants which can take up nearly that much space and have an environmental impact of thousands of acres(coal has to be mined, you know), it is indeed small.
- nhtahoe, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Lets put the size of this thing into some perspective:
100 Acres = 4.35M square feet
As a circle, its radius would be 1,177 feet with a circumference of 1.4 miles.
In football fields, it would be just under 76! - Ebulating, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Japan extracted uranium from seawater at a cost of 5-10 times cost to mine it, but since the actual cost of uranium is only 6% of the cost of the electricity, that would mean 12 cents/kwh instead of 8.
And finally, you can use thorium in a reactor. And there is a LOT more Thorium than uranium. We would have many thousands of years of thorium, even if it was used to power everything. Such is the power of E=MC^2 - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40862000/jpg/_40862295_afptoilet300.jpg
- bboySNO, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8Woah! I just finished watching Back to the Future, logged on to digg and discovered this. Maybe that thunderstorm that passed by a few hours ago had something to do with it...
- Atomic1fire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5as opposed to what
windshields and powerlines
have you ever watched a wind turbine
most I have seen dont move all to fast
so I doubt a bird will die from a slow moving turbine - bIuebonics, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7i seriously hope you're attempting a bad joke. for the record, there are two pronunciations of giga- ... the "common" by most dictionaries being jiga- (like gigantic) and the alternative being giga- (as in gold) ... there is no such proper pronunciation as "jija" as Crasoum states. jiga isn't how it's spelled and there is no SI prefix jiga...
- Atomic1fire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4windmills look cool
- themuffinman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4By those numbers and some simple math, the thing would cost around 87,600,000 to make.
- bIuebonics, on 10/10/2007, -0/+41.21
- ApeInago, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5http://www.zephyrpower.com/prod.html apparently not.
- bIuebonics, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5treehugger is equally as absurd for science news as fox. try... let's see... physorg? something that actually publishes useful scientific information.
- MutatedNantuko, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5According to Wikipedia the Mohave Generating Station can generate 1,580 MW in coal power.
- Kratisto, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4God, what has Back to the Future done. Now you can scarcely see mention of GW without seeing and thinking Jiggawatts.
- abdrahman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4you are forgetting the "economically recoverable at a price of 130 $/kg," part; as demand and price increases, further deposits will open up due to being economically feasible at higher price rates. There is enough Uranium economically available at
- bIuebonics, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4clever, you were able to take a common psuedo-derogatory term "libtards", and being the genius you are noticing that tards is close in spelling to turds, change it to something that doesn't even resemble an entire word in and of itself. you clever, clever person.
- grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4The turbine speed actually depends on the length and angle of the blade and the speed of the wind. On our recent holiday I drove past a windfarm and stopped at the viewing platform (it looked spectacular). According to the info panel which I took a photo of, the rotor diameter is 62m and it has a maximum speed of 19rpm (about 1 rotation in 3 seconds). A bit of math later, 62*pi = 195m, and it does that up to 19 times per minute. So the outside tip of the blade can be moving up to 60m per second (216km per hour or 134 miles per hour). In honesty, the ones we saw were spinning about once every 10 seconds. These were rated at 1.3MW, so yours will be quite a different beast.
I imagine at that speed, yes it would be quite deadly to birds, but newsflash, damming up rivers for hydro kills a hell of a lot of animals. Strip mining coal and uranium kills the habitats of a lot of animals. The power grid kills more than a few possums. Burning coal puts all sorts of crap into the air that has a detrimental affect on people and animals. I am not saying we should not try to design the turbines to minimise this happenning, but a bit of perspective never goes astray.
Wind is a great source of power, and although it is not perfect and there is still 'environmental damage', it is one of the least damaging we have. -
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