Queen Elizabeth has been listening to her son

It looks like the dinner table conversation at Buckingham Palace has finally paid off: Prince Charles has convinced his mom to build a wind turbine, and a big one at that.

According to Reuters, the Queen will be investing in the largest wind turbine in the world through her property company, the Crown Estate. It's this company that owns the seabed off the British shore and has already been leasing space for wind farm projects. This is the first time, however, that the crown will be directly investing in infrastructure.

At 7.5 megawatts, the turbine, to be built by Clipper Windpower, will be the world's largest and will be positioned somewhere off the northeast coast of England up to 200 nautical miles out. The power will all be sold back into the British power grid. The turbine is expected to be online by 2010.

Meanwhile, over in Norway, plans are afoot to construct the world's first floating wind turbine. Norway's state-controlled StatoilHydro ASA is undertaking an $80 million pilot project to test a 2.3-megawatt wind turbine with 260-foot blades six miles off the western coast.

By using the same technology it's developed for floating oil rigs, StaoilHydro hopes to develop a more inexpensive and flexible way to deploy wind generation technology in the future.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.