Key Facebook investor puts $300K into Canadian plan to make artificial tornados

National Post ^ | December 17, 2012

[Squawk 8888]

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel just gave Canadian inventor Louis Michaud $300,000 to make man-made tornadoes.

Michaud and his company, AVEtec, are building a prototype of its Atmospheric Vortex Engine to create tornadoes about 40 meters high that can produce energy from waste heat.

The energy would be free of carbon emissions, and would only cost 3 cents per kilowatt hour. As a reference, coal can cost anywhere from 4 to 5 cents per kwh.

[Squawk 8888]

I'm skeptical but as long as it's private money and not my taxes paying for it I think it's a pretty cool idea.

[Squawk 8888]

To all- please ping me to Canadian topics.

Canada Ping!

[mkmensinger]

“Atmospheric Vortex Engine to create tornadoes about 40 meters high that can produce energy from waste heat”

What could possibly go wrong?

[freedumb2003]

Rove better run to the courthouse to assert his patent rights! ;)

[Flightdeck]

I think Canadian inventor Louis Michaud just got $300,000 for some bull____

[CrazyIvan]

In Toto crazy idea.

[fso301]

If people think windmills are loud, wait tillthey have vortex/hail cannons blasting away:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GteGbZeKsOI

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

Don’t screw with Mother Nature.

[ckilmer]

Michaud and his company, AVEtec, are building a prototype of its Atmospheric Vortex Engine to create tornadoes about 40 meters high that can produce energy from waste heat.

The energy would be free of carbon emissions, and would only cost 3 cents per kilowatt hour. As a reference, coal can cost anywhere from 4 to 5 cents per kwh.
............
the smarter thing to do would be to use a solar concentrator. These are typically pointed at some oil or salt fluid that is used to boil water. but I don’t think they produce electricity at 3 cents a kilowatt hour.

[WildWeasel]

PT Barnum was right, there’s a sucker born every minute.

Besides, this would thing would make more money at Six Flags versus a magical energy machine.

[Boogieman]

So, basically they think the vortex will just be a more efficient heat engine? Otherwise, what exactly is generating more energy from the waste heat than a regular heat engine?

The only way I see this generating power is if the waste heat simply provides the catalyst to create a vortex that could be sustained by drawing further energy from the atmosphere’s normal temperature differentials.

[Squawk 8888]

That’s an interesting point- I’ll have to find out more about it. It could be a way to produce energy from temperature differentials that are lower than other means, making it practical to recover waste heat. AFAIK the Stirling engine can run on extremely low differentials but is not scalable in any practical sense.