MagLev Wind Power Generator

The "MagLev generator" is said to be the world’s first (Ref) permanent magnetic levitation wind power generator. Magnetic levitation is an important new development to reduce stress from the mechanical load on the wind turbine.

It is being regarded as a key breakthrough in the evolution of global wind power technology, boosting generation capacity by as much as 20% over traditional wind turbines, and dropping operational costs by as much as 50%.

How it Works
The magnetic levitation that they use is between the rotating shaft and the fixed base of the machine, basically taking the place of ball bearings. Such magnetic bearings have been used for decades in smaller turbines and pumps by Ebara, Leybold, Seiko-Seiki, and others. However, they generally can't handle being bumped around much (the magnetic force isn't that strong), and they generally require actively controlled electromagnets (to keep the levitating magnets from crashing--play with some magnets for a minute or two and you'll see why). Making magnetic bearings beefy enough to handle the loads a wind turbine would put on them is hard, and would use prohibitive amounts of power just keeping the electromagnets running strongly enough. However, the Worldwatch article says the new Chinese device uses "full-permanent" magnets, meaning there are no electromagnets, only cleverly placed permanent ones, so it should use no power.
"Unfortunately there's not a shred of additional technical information in the article, nor is there any to be found elsewhere online (if you have any, please leave a comment!), so we can only speculate what their solution was. A little research made me conclude (and this is also suggested by a couple highly knowledgeable Treehugger readers who left comments) that they're probably using Halbach arrays in a system like the Inductrack invented at Lawrence Livermore Labs several years ago. Any permanent magnet system would doubtless need lots of Neodymium ("rare earth") magnets, which may have questionable sustainability when mined in large amounts, but as it happens China is rich in that element--in fact, energy.buzz points out that China owns 90% of the world's market of rare earth magnets."