Maglev wind turbine.

A Maglev wind turbine or Maglev windmill would use magnetic levitation to replace conventional bearings in the design of a wind turbine. A recent design of Maglev wind turbine was developed in China by Guangzhou Energy Research Institute. This design of Maglev wind turbine claims to utilize winds with starting speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second (m/s), and cut-in speeds of 3 m/s. Such Maglev wind turbine should be able to add 1,000 hours of operation annually to wind power plants in areas with an average wind speed of 3 m/s.[1] However, since the energy available in wind varies so the power produced by Maglev wind turbine at such velocities would be lower than conventional wind turbines under higher speed winds.
The rotating turbine shaft in Maglev wind turbine is supported by magnetic levitation instead of ball bearings. Magnetic bearings have been used for smaller turbines and pumps, but they generally can't handle impacts disturbing the shaft, and generally require actively controlled electromagnets. Making magnetic bearings strong enough to handle the loads of a Maglev wind turbine would use prohibitive amounts of power just keeping the electromagnets running. The Chinese design of Maglev wind turbine is said to use permanent magnets to support the rotor shaft.
Little detailed technical information supporting these claims about Maglev wind turbine is available in English.
Chinese company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology invested CN¥400 million in building the base for the maglev wind turbine generators, in which construction began in November 2007. Maglev Wind Turbine Technologies Inc. announced the launch of a wind turbine power generating device based on magnetic levitation called the Maglev Wind Turbine on July 26, 2007.

Mysterious Maglev wind turbine

Maglev wind turbine has been a big splash on Worldwatch's blog, Treehugger and inhabitat. The original article about Maglev wind turbine
was in Chinese Xinhua News paper, and as per this article about Maglev wind turbine some of the claims from the English and web media are misleading.

First of all Maglev wind turbine won't be levitating off the ground, and won't be frictionless as well, but these may be significantly more efficient than existing windmills. The magnetic levitation that Maglev wind turbine would use is between the rotating shaft and the fixed base of the machine, basically taking the place of ball bearings. Such magnetic bearings have been used for decades in smaller turbines and pumps by Ebara, Leybold, Seiko-Seiki, and others. However, they generally can't handle being bumped around much because the magnetic force isn't that strong enough. Making magnetic bearings strong enough to handle the loads put on them by Maglev wind turbine would be hard, and would use prohibitive amounts of power just keeping the electromagnets running strongly enough. However, the Worldwatch article says the new Chinese device uses "full-permanent" magnets, meaning there are no electromagnets, only cleverly placed permanent ones, so it should use no power. It sounds like they will be used on small turbines (perfect for home use), which would be similar in scale to the pumps and industrial turbines currently using magnetic bearings. But who knows, in a few years it might be possible to scale them up for Maglev wind turbine.
Unfortunately there's not a shred of additional technical information in the article about Maglev wind turbine’s structure. so we can only speculate what their solution was for the mysterious Maglev wind turbine. Some are speculating that they're probably using Halbach arrays in a system like the Inductrack invented at Lawrence Livermore Labs several years ago. Any permanent magnet system would doubtless need lots of Neodymium ("rare earth") magnets, which may have questionable sustainability when mined in large amounts, but as it happens China is rich in that element--in fact, energy.buzz points out that China owns 90% of the world's market of rare earth magnets. Since July 2006 Maglev wind turbine remains a mystery with very little details and even lesser news.

Aeroturbine free energy or a cost disaster

Aeroturbine by Aerotecture are being called the future of urban wind energy. Despite of this positive reputation of Aeroturbine many are arguing that the asking price by Aerotecture is a too high. Assuming that one could get 5 KWH per day out of the 1KW 510V model of Aeroturbine and assuming that the value of the KWH is $0.12/KWH, yearly income equivalent would be;

365days/yr x 5KWH/day x $0.12/KWH = $219/year
Therefore payback time in years would be
$15,000/($219/yr) = 68.5 years

Even if you could get 10 kWH per day (which is doubtful because where are you going to have wind blowing at 30mph 10 hours/day), the payback for Aeroturbine would still be about 35 years. However, Bill Becker’s Aeroturbine its self would probably breakdown long before that.

Being a strong supporter of green energy, the cost of Aeroturbine does not disturb me, but Aerotecture should consider a more sensible pricing for Aeroturbine as green technology should be consumer friendly and so that its implementation can be wide spread. Aeroturbine its self is not an expansive set of equipment, in fact it’s simple and cheaper in terms of manicuring compared to the regular wind turbines. Aeroturbine is a light weight easy to install low thought regular yield equipment that should be sold in bulks on more retail grounds.

Energy Starved New york

High-flying kites could generate enough wind energy to power New York.

The energy starved world of today is looking for possible ways using which the maximum amount of renewable energy could be generated that could not just power a city block or a small town but the largest cities in the world and probably the entire world as well. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution and California State University have identified New York as one of the prime locations where high-flying kites can be used to convert high-altitude winds into energy.

Unlike winds close to the surface of earth, winds in the upper regions of the atmosphere preferably those which make the jet streams can be harnessed to produce tens of times of output than conventional wind turbines that are used on the surface. Ideally, the turbines, which would be high-altitude flying kites tethered to the surface, would have be placed at a height of around 30,000 feet.

Jet stream winds are generally 10 times faster than winds near the ground and most importantly they’re steady as well. More wind speed means more energy, which made scientists at these universities believe that they can power entire cities by flying these kites, a process which looks simple on paper but might get complicated if actually planned. These scientists predict up to 40MW of electricity can be generated by the current designs and transmitted to the ground via the tether, which is about four times the output of current designs used on the surface.

A green Ride

Niklas Palm, a design student at the Umeå Institute of Design, has shared with us his latest creation, the Audi IceKraft_, which is a wind and solar powered vehicle to make your icy rides green. The vehicle has a computer-controlled sail that is connected to an electrical engine that turns the sail to the optimum position. The power comes from solar cells that are covering the entire body of the vehicle.
The driver is positioned on his stomach facing forward and controls the Icekraft_ with two handles attached to the front blades. When for example the left handle is pulled toward the driver’s body, the vehicle leans to the left and creates a carving effect that makes the vehicle turn left.