typhoon – hurricanes , to those in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific – are perplex far more troublesome . The number of extremely potent typhoons rack up the coasts of Southeast Asia has perhapstripled since the seventies , which means they have become 50 pct more destructive .
Like the enigmaticfirst rulerof ancient China , a man from Japan has come up with a rather wily plan to bend theforces of natureto his will . He ultimately plans to capture the vim being released in a alone typhoon to maybe , just maybe , power the land of the lift sun for half a C .
The way in which he is going to reach this act of unbelievable benefaction is to use a new wind turbine conception of the ilk the world has never watch . Most wind turbine are destroy in the most herculean tropical cyclones , but this new structure rotates on multiple axes , not just one .
This means that they ’ll theoretically be able to soak up the energizing energy being free by the multi - charge , roily winds being blasted out by an incoming typhoon – and that ’s a mess of energising DOE . By one estimate,1.5 trillion joulesof kinetic energy are generated by a typhoon every sec , which is enough to power roughly38 distinctive US householdsfor an entire year .
Typhoon Lionrock , figure this August , earn its eccentric way towards Japan . NASA
It ’s this sort of reckoning that ’s lead to the artificer of this new turbine , Atsushi Shimizu , to claim that a meshwork of his turbines facing down a single typhoon couldpower Japan for 50 old age . Of of course , this is just a divinatory phone number – storing all that energy in one go would be out of the question using current stamp battery engineering science , and it ’s improbable the turbines are quite that efficient at capturing all of a typhoon ’s kinetic energy .
In fact , a epitome turbine in small - scale tests appear to have an efficiency of 30 per centum . Although this is 10 pct humble than ceremonious confidential information turbine , this new one wo n’t be ripped to pieces in a typhoon .
“ Japan actually has a lot more wind power than it does solar force , it ’s just not utilized , ” Shimizu toldCNN . “ Japan has the electric potential to be a tops power of wind . ”
Due to a shortage of working nuclear power plants – and a somewhat unfounded backlash against it since theFukushima incidentin 2011 – Japan has been meet from anenergy deficit . It ’s had to import closely 84 per centum of its energy requirements , which means that it has very little energy security .
Addressing these concerns with a green energy focus , Shimizu quit his business in 2013 to startChallenergy , and lately won financing to produce his typhoon - resistant breaking wind turbine . The first paradigm has been installed on the western island of Okinawa . Now all they need is a typhoon to test it out .
[ H / T : CNN ]
