From War Machine to Clean Energy

In the early 1980s, inven­tor and air­ship designer Fred Ferguson received gov­ern­ment fund­ing for the design of a device called the Magnus Airship. “It was funded through the United States Star Wars pro­gram at the time,” Anthony Pizarro, Director of Corporate Development for Magenn Power—founded by Fred Ferguson—told Organic Connections. “There was a mil­i­tary inten­tion behind it, and it was to be a high-altitude lift­ing plat­form. For what pur­pose exactly I couldn’t say. Basically it was a round ball that was spin­ning, and on either hub of the sphere there was an elec­tric motor. It was free float­ing, and the pur­pose behind that rota­tion was to give it bet­ter lift and maneuverability.”

When the Star Wars pro­gram was can­celled, fund­ing was pulled for the Magnus Airship and Ferguson went on to other ven­tures. Later, how­ever, in 2004, when record black­outs were occur­ring in California, wind energy began to receive seri­ous atten­tion. “Fred got the idea that he should design some­thing like the Magnus Airship, only he would shape blades into the body of the sphere and tether it to the ground,” Pizarro explained. “Instead of hav­ing elec­tric motors on the hubs, he would have elec­tric gen­er­a­tors. So he set about patent­ing the idea and even­tu­ally the patent came through. It went from military/Star Wars to renew­able energy; it’s kind of funny when you think about it.”

The result was the MARS—an acronym for Magenn Air Rotor System. MARS is a helium-filled teth­ered wind tur­bine that rotates about a hor­i­zon­tal axis in response to wind, gen­er­at­ing elec­tri­cal energy. The energy is then trans­ferred down a 1,000-foot tether for imme­di­ate use, or to a set of bat­ter­ies for later use, or to the power grid. The use of helium allows MARS to ascend to a higher alti­tude than tra­di­tional wind tur­bines, and it cap­tures the energy avail­able in the 600- to 1,000-foot low-level and noc­tur­nal jet streams that exist almost every­where. The rota­tion also pro­vides addi­tional lift, keeps the MARS sta­bi­lized, and posi­tions it within a very con­trolled and restricted loca­tion to adhere to Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada guidelines.

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

The ini­tial appli­ca­tions being tar­geted are those that cur­rently uti­lize diesel-generated power, such as min­ing, oil and gas, which have power require­ments but no grid con­nec­tion. Other exam­ples include fac­to­ries or rural appli­ca­tions where there is a grid that is not reli­able or is very expensive.

“It turns out that the mar­ket for this is fairly large,” Pizarro said. “For exam­ple, the diesel-generated power mar­ket world­wide is almost $50 bil­lion, so there’s a lot of fuel out there being pur­chased just for the sake of run­ning diesel gen­er­a­tors all over the world. It can be very expen­sive, because if you have a remote site, you have to bring fuel in and out and so on, and a cost per kilo­watt hour can be quite high.”

The tech­nol­ogy is still in its infancy as far as deploy­ment goes; cur­rently there are three test­ing sites oper­at­ing, with another planned in the com­ing year.

It is cer­tainly hoped that tech­nol­ogy such as the MARS even­tu­ally becomes mainstream—and that many more lessons can be learned about con­vert­ing high tech­nol­ogy to peace­ful uses.

For more infor­ma­tion about the MARS and Magenn Power, please visit the Magenn Power web­site at www.magenn.com.