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.

Comments

This is actually quite old

[Neorej]

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.

Excellent News

[lysurgon]

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.

Re:Excellent News

[davejenkins]

Then make sure you run right out and buy that really expensive fuel-cell car. Oh, and feel free to pay some extra voluntary taxes with a little note attached 'please give to alternative-energy scientists'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not to hip on coal either. But my point is that it's always better to pursue the cheapest energy. If we can incorporate the 'pollution' costs into the cost of that energy, then these alternatives start to look sexy.

Re:Excellent News

[electroniceric]

Right, but "free" markets show a remarkable inertia when it comes to adding costs for things people can otherwise keep off their balance sheets. Here the environmental costs are a public good, so their costs are sloughed off of balance sheets and onto the back of the public.

The only actor with the ability to put these costs back on balance sheets where they belong is the TV personality every American loves to hate - the government. But in the US we've come to think it's our right to have a society without taxes or rules, so we steadfastly resist this. I really think in this case, we need to look at stricter environmental laws as common sense economics - the public looking out for itself.

Marine life

[B.D.Mills]

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.

Re:Slowing down the earth/moon

[Alioth]

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)

Fixed and marginal costs

[Charles Dodgeson]

People forget that just because some scheme gives you very low marginal costs it doesn't give you "free" (as in beer) electricity. Even with conventional gas fueled electricity generation, the cost of the fuel is not much of an issue. It is the cost of the building the plants in the first place that make the electricity costly.

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.

Re:Surfing

[catkinson]

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?