Magenn Floating Wind Turbines

OMG…these are absolutely awesome…I want one!

This is the Magenn Power Air Rotor System, an innovative new floating wind turbine that is lighter-than-air because of the use of helium as a lifting method. The horizontal turbine design provides energy generation efficiency that’s superior to current conventional turbines, which also means lower cost. The juice is transferred down the tether to a transformer at a ground station where it is then transferred to the grid.

The company, Magenn Power, is based in Ottawa, Canada and is set to start selling the first models this coming spring. Those first production models will be a 4 kW residential system that will retail for just $10,000 USD. Future planned versions will range from a small 20ft by 6ft 1 kW unit all the way up to a 200ft long one that will generate 1.6 mW and power up to 300 homes.

The 4 kW residential unit has an operating height of between 150ft and 400ft altitude and then the bigger units will be designed to go as high as almost 1000ft.

I’m sure there will be tons of folks who will start complaining about the possibility of having dozens or even hundreds of these floating around above our heads but I think they’re fantastic.

Treehugger has got a fairly indepth post on these and the comment discussion there is lively with one of the actual inventors stopping by to take part.

Magenn Power’s own web site is here and is quite informative. Well worth a perusal.