I was at the 2009 International Builders Show in Las Vagas and was able to come upon and Mag-wind booth.  I have seen these turbines before in magazines and even on the discovery channel.  Has anybody had any experience with these systems and how did everything go?  A bonus to meetinag and talking the the inventer.  I was able to meet Ed Begley Jr. at the booth as well. 

Andy in Wisconsin

It is very sad to see that Ed Begley has endorsed this pile of crap...but money can buy the souls of many men...

Here's what Paul Gipe (an expert on wind turbines) has to say about Mag-wind:

Wind energy expert Paul Gipe has posted his thoughts on the Mag-Wind Verticle Wind Turbine (previously). Essentially, Paul deems this device everything but a dream:

Ok, let's take another approach. Mag-Wind says its wind turbine will produce 5 kW at a rated speed of 28 mph (12.5 m/s). To produce that much power at that wind speed it would need to be 281% efficient! Yee ha. That's some windmill. Modern wind turbines, at best, can deliver 40% of the energy in the wind at any specific wind speed. This turbine has a specific rotor loading of 3,360 W/m² of rotor area. Let's compare that to the over rated AirX. The AirX is somewhat smaller so we won't compare actual production, just rotor loading. Remember, the AirX doesn't even deliver what is promised. The specific rotor load for the AirX is about 400 W/m². The Mag-Wind claims to produce from its rotor almost ten times more power than the AirX which can't even meet its performance claims. Ouch. I've never seen such outlandish claims before-and I've seen a lot of them.

Summary

This contraption doesn't even deserve the time I've spent to write this up.

Will it do what it claims? No. Not on this planet.

Would I buy one? No way!

Would I take one if it was given to me? No way.

What is it good for then? A roof vent or a lawn ornament. It could make a nice lawn ornament. It's not a windmill.

see: http://www.wind-works.org/articles/Mag-WindPyramidalPower.html