Typhoons are generally associated with mass destruction, but a Japanese engineer has developed a wind turbine that can harness the tremendous power of these storms and turn it into useful energy. If he's right, a single typhoon could power Japan for 50 years.
Atsushi Shimizu is the inventor of the world's first typhoon turbine—an extremely durable, eggbeater-shaped device that can not only withstand the awesome forces generated by a typhoon, it can convert all that power into useable energy. Shimizu's calculations show that a sufficiently large array of his turbines could capture enough energy from a single typhoon to power Japan for 50 years.
Less efficient that traditional turbines, but built more rugged to survive a typhoon.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday September 30 2016, @07:16AM
That was my immediate reaction as well. May as well say that a single Hiroshima-sized bomb would produce enough energy to power Japan for 50 years.
(OK, I'm exaggerating for effect there, it's only about 20MW/h, the point is that you've got just as much chance of storing it as for the wind farm in the original article).