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Alternative Energy: Power Via Coastal Wave Motion.
lavalamp writes "Scottish company Ocean Power Delivery has developed a sectional-torpedo-looking-thing as a means to transform the raw fury of the sea into electricity! I'm curious to see what happens when another drunk Exxon captain plows into a field of these things. They just secured a 8.6m (usd) in funding to continue research and build a large scale prototype." The company has won a contract to produce a 750kw "plant" off of the scottish coast and has an mou to produce a 2Mw project off of the coast of Vancouver Island in Canada. While this is far from being free energy, it is a pretty interesting way of deriving power from the tides. A side benefit is that surfers will finally be able to rail like their boarding cousins.
I wonder if they've studied the effects of using things like this first. I mean sure, it's clean energy....but damn first off it kills the view right off the bat. How about marine life, how do they take to giant red torpedo's in their environment. Does it confuse them? etc.... Is this only going to be done in places people don't frequent for surfing and swimming. There's very little information on the site, leaves ya with more questions than answers.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
I remember these books I had on "How things work" when I was a kid. One of them was all about the earth itself, volcanos, wind, water, the works.
I vividly remember a picture of a wave with a bunch of strange yellow things in it. The things were wave braker like devices that used the power of the waves to generate electricity.
"When I was a kid" is somewhere around the mid eighties here, I guess.
If everything I learned from books then is going to be re-invented this century I think we still have a LONG list ahead of us. Let's hope they pass up on some of the more stupid ones, like Windows 3.0.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I wonder what nasty side-effects that will cause in the ocean.
You just can't take energy out of a system without a side-effect.
Of course, it will only be an issue if it is ever scaled up.
I'm wondering if this isn't something that might help us here in California with our so-called "energy crisis".
I firmly believe that we're all getting ripped off by the energy companies out here, and that the crisis would be solved if the idiot power companies would shape up. However, this doesn't seem to be happening, so perhaps this might bring some new companies to the table, and possible spark a little competition out here? Perhaps at least give us more options so we can quit being raped by our electric bills. Even with cutting back, I'm paying a lot.
Besides, to cut back anymore would require powering down my servers. That's just not gonna happen.
Though this design is nothing new (I remember a theoretical drawing in a high school textbook), it's excellent to hear that some medium scale implementations are going though.
I can't help but think how this compares to the US energy policy, which basically boils down to "clean coal" and scrapping regulations that would mandade fuel efficency and pollution reductions. As troubling as this is from an environmental perspective, what's more troubling is the lack of desire within the leadership of this nation to actively invest in and pursue technology.
We as a nation seem to be more than willing to let our technological advantages slip away in our moment of decadence.
Iceland is buiding fuel-cell technology into their public buses and merchant/fishing fleet. Scotland is making power from the waves. East Germany has an all-fiber telecom network, and we have... "clean coal" and SUVs that get less than 18mpg.
Hmmmm... I don't like where this is going in the long run. The US government has the biggest bankroll of any nation. We should be putting it to better use if you ask me.
Howard Dean for president
what a chicken little-type statement. It's not an easy place to put a bomb. You would need a raft, boat, or something, and then you would have to cross the floating fence they would put up around it.
and any 'terrorist' wouldn't really get that much bang out of it-- stuff doesn't blow up that easily when it's in the water.
How long will EVERY conversation we have about ANYTHING require the obligatory security/terrorist wanring/advocation?
davejenkins.com |
I'm just imagining what the marine life around these things will look like once they've been in place a few years. Far from being detrimental, they'll actually be prime real estate for marine life. They will provide shade and places for seaweed and other plant life to grow. A single piece of driftwood in the open ocean can attract a lot of marine life, so imagine what these babies will do.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Erm, the energy already gets used up. The washing of the waves up and down (without the wave generators) gets turned into sound/heat energy anyway.
Think of this energy like using the steam coming off a kettle to drive a kid's toy windmill - you won't affect the rate at which the kettle boils (but you will change where the kinetic energy from the steam is turned into heat)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
So while I'm happy to see a range of things working out as possibly viable, 750kW is not alot to get out of the resources that appear to be going into this.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
You ever tried surfing off the coast of Vancouver Island?
I'll give you a hint---it's freezing!
Sure, there are a few hardy souls who don their drysuits and hoods, I'm not meaning to discredit them!
The view? Fish can't swim around it? An undersea structure like this will likely provide habitat for so many other creatures.
Some study needs to be done--I agree! But to write the idea off as crazy is not appropriate. I'd settle for less view, a few disgruntled surfers, fish that are on drugs, if it meant that Vancouver Island could have some energy independence from the mainland.
Currently we do not produce enough power on the island for our needs and we import it from the Mainland and Washington State. Soon they are talking about building a natural gas pipeline.
Now what do you think about it?
Even if it is not enough energy there will still be an effect (just not detectable by our instruments)
That would make it a theoretical effect, right? I.e., if we can't observe it, even indirectly, then it may or may not actually exist. Thus, this idea is more philosophical than scientific.
Anyway, I still object to the idea that any energy is "lost" or "removed from the system." The energy is transformed and relocated, but it's not "lost." Perhaps this energy will be relocated to people's Pentium laptops, thus increasing global warming, thus keeping the Earth's core and mantel from cooling as quickly, thus allowing the core and mantel to continue to be affected by tidal forces, thus keeping the energy entirely "within" the "system" and allowing the moon to stay in its comfortable orbit.
Problem solved! And I never realized how Intel might be saving the planet from annihilation. Wow.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."