At present, there are several countries such as USA, Germany and China that are in the forefront of producing green energy from renewable and non polluting resources such as solar and wind energy. In terms of wind energy, we will have a look at a super wind turbine called MagLev which is the key to building stronger and more efficient turbines in the future. MagLev was first unveiled in the Wind Power Exhibition in Asia in Beijing. This turbine is surely going to take wind power technology to a whole new level with the help of magnetic levitation.
The turbine makes use of magnetic levitation in the following way. The turbine has vertically oriented blades and these are suspended in the air above the base of the machine. Hence there is no use of ball bearings to support the blades. The turbines make use of permanent magnets instead of electromagnets. Hence there is no use of electricity to run the turbines. The magnet employs the practicality of neodymium magnets and hence there is no energy wasted in terms of friction.
Hence there are no maintenance costs to be shelled out and the life of the generator is increased manifold.
The MagLev turbine has several benefits over the conventional wind turbines. MagLev is able to make use of low intensity winds that blow at 1.5 meters per second. And the turbine can also operate well in high intensity winds of 40 m/s. MagLev is today the largest conventional wind turbine in the world producing 5 watts of power. Today one MagLev can produce total power of one gigawatt of power which is enough to provide electricity to 750,000 homes.
Hence you can imagine how important a MagLev can be to produce clean and green electricity to sustain our environment.
The MagLev has also increased wind generation capacity by 20% over the conventional wind turbines. The operational costs on the other hand have decreased by 50%. The wind turbines will be made operational for at least the next 500 years.
Construction of the MagLev was started in China in November, 2007.
The private firm, Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology has invested close to 400 million yuan in building the facility. In the US, the Arizona based firm, MagLev Wind Turbine Technologies will be manufacturing these wind turbines commercially. The company says that it will deliver 1 kilowatt of clean power at less than 1 cent per watt.