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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.
Well, considering Hazelwood wasn't at the helm I suppose it'd be a first if it happened. Why is it that environmentalists looking for alternate power sources have to bash the oil companies?
I swear, it's as bad as the open source zealots going after microsoft. Why can't people just say, "Hey - alternate power cool!" instead of bashing the oil companies? Because, let me tell you, the oil companies are a lot better than Microsoft as far as their antics. Microsoft doesn't have a bunch of hippies surrounding every office building 24/7 waiting to bust them for hurting some fuzzy animal.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
When will those Dune windtraps become reality??
Seriously, power generation via wave is old news.
Check out this site for some backgrounds.
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
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
How do these things interact with sea life? Often, various species of fish and invertabrate type creates cling to relatively stationary type things in the ocean- often intentional, such as when an obsolete ship is sunk for an artificial reef.
So if sea life starts to make a home out of these things, will it interfere with their operation? I could probably figure it out from their PDF's but I've left work and my brain has shut down for the day.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
Don't forget this older slashdot article that deals with the dangers of tidal power, namely that since it's the moon's gravitational pull that powers the tides, by harnessing them for power, we'll slow the moon down in its orbit, causing it to fall and crash into the earth. Probably onto some kind of target laid out by Taco Bell as a free taco promotion.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
No oil company bashing from this AC. However, unless this power generation technique is competitive with burning petroleum at about US$33 per barrel, it won't be practical in the long run. The same thing applies to any energy generation, recovery or conservation scheme.
This is because the petroleum supply curve has a bend in it, and that bend implies huge surpluses above a certain breakpoint, which in 2002 is about $33 per barrel.
The bend is there because of the natural distribution of oil deposits - they're lognormally distributed with respect to energy content. This phenomenon applies to the supply curves for all minerals deposited by sedimentary processes, BTW.
What a smashing development.
They sure seem energetic about this idea.
Within months the company will be all washed up.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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
In a related story, researchers in belgium are working on a prototype system designed to capture usefull levels of electric power from night-club dance floors.
"Many people haven't personally seen the levels of activity that frequently are exerted in the techno-music scene. It's really quite suprisingly frenetic" says one researcher.
And because all night dance clubs are so popular in Euroland, there is a not insignificant untapped potential for power generation. The scientists are especially exited to be developing a prototype system to be deployed in Ibiza, Spain.
"What's especially fitting about this locale, is that a majority of the partiers [or, as we like to call them, acoustically stimulable periodic mass distributors] are in fact foreign tourists; which truly is free energy. They even pay to stay here, and pay for the food they are so efficiently converting into mechanical energy!
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Well, if you take energy out of a system (like the ocean) you cool it down, right? So maybe if we get enough of these suckers, we can refreeze all those icebergs that are breaking off down in Antarctica...
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 |
developed a sectional-torpedo-looking-thing as a means to transform the raw fury of the sea into electricity!
:)
Or, if you build one in Coney Island, the raw sewage of the sea, hypodermics and all.
I used to live there. I know what I'm talking about. I used to live on the Jersey coast too, but that'd be too easy.
Triv
Nope. That was using -tidal- power, [where you capture the high tide and then drain it for kinetic energy]. This is different, it is dampening the energy out of waves caused by wind. Of course, this could ultimately affect climate if done in open ocean or something, but generally I imagine it would be done for waves that would otherwise crash to shore. So, if anything, it will just reduce the rate of erosion, [and piss os surfers].
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
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
This isn't the only wave-energy project currently in development. There's also a project by a Dutch company (AWS BV.), called the Archimedes Wave Swing. Their 6MW pilot plant is to be tested from April onwards in Portugal. It's a really interesting concept, using the law of Archimedes to generate power.
You can find it at http://www.waveswing.com
I had heard something about this on NPR. I do not believe they indeed on trying to use the power to power homes and such, but instead, to run a desalinization plant to provide freshwater to remote places.
It becomes cost effective because it would be overly expensive to provide power out to these remote areas which desparately need fresh water. It supposedly opens up a whole bunch of land to agriculture that was unusable before.
I remember hearing about this being done before for some third world country but it failing miserably because of storms and such.
Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to find much info on google so I could be mistaken.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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
but you're not far off. At the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR, they have a floor on a suspension system. The whole thing moves under your feet a little. If you could harness it, you could probably generate just enough electricity to pump out the cigarette nimbus clouds that accumulate during concerts.
You know what?
Most tides are caused by the earth being attracted to the moon (The sun exerts some tides, but they are negligible). When the moon approaches the earth more closely in its orbit, and as the earth itself rotates, the distance between the two bodies changes and hence the land and especially the water rise or fall. Thus, while tides are a side effect of planetary motion, the force of the tides itself arises from the mass and distance of the moon, and not from the moon's motion around the earth. So harnessing the tides won't affect the earth's rotation, or the orbit of the moon. You may be confused with the "slingshot" technique, whereby spaceships are swung around a planet in order to bank off their natural rotation, which does indeed slow the rotation of the planet slightly.
I read an interesting perspective on wave power from Dr. Peter M. Duesing regarding the exploitation of wave and tidal power here that basically says that its prospects of being a major contributor to large scale production are slight. On a small scale there are several cases that support localised usage.
Regarding Ocean POwer Delivery, there is a pdf regarding their funding package available here.
If their site goes down or if you don't want to click, here is the text clipped from the pdf:
Press release
Wave energy company Ocean Power Delivery secures £6m funding package
Edinburgh-based wave energy company Ocean Power Delivery Ltd (OPD) today announced that is has secured £6m (EUR 9.8m) funding from an international consortium of venture capital companies led by Norsk Hydro Technology Ventures (NTV), the venture capital arm of Norway's largest industrial company and including 3i, Europe's leading venture capital company and Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). Each organisation provided an equal level of funding to produce the largest investment of its kind in a wave power company.
The investment success builds on OPD's steady rise to prominence in the field and clears the way for the company to become the leading force in the sector.
"This investment is the culmination of OPD's intensive four-year programme to develop the Pelamis concept, the funds secured today will allow us to demonstrate and commercialise the system," says Richard Yemm, Managing Director of OPD. "Wave energy represents a major commercial opportunity and we have positioned ourselves well to take advantage of this."
The Pelamis is a long, thin, semi-submerged articulated structure composed of four cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints, the complete system is oriented head-on to incoming waves. The wave-induced motion of the joints is resisted by hydraulic rams, these pump fluid through hydraulic motors to drive electrical generators. A 750kW machine with a similar output to a modern wind turbine will be 150metres long and 3.5metres in diameter. An array of 40 Pelamis machines would provide enough power to supply the energy needs of 20,000 homes.
OPD aims to have a working prototype producing electricity to the grid within the next two years.
Many previous wave energy concepts have failed as they lack the inherent survivability of the Pelamis. The system uses the unique combination of a streamlined, low-profile form and proven technology from the offshore oil and gas sector to provide the required load-shedding and reliability to withstand the rigours of the marine environment.
OPD has recently demonstrated the system at intermediate scale in the Firth of Forth as part of a UK DTI supported programme to address all key aspects of technical risk. Further DTI support in conjunction with today's investment will allow all elements of the full-scale system to be thoroughly tested this summer before being installed in the first full-scale demonstrator next year.
In 1999 the company won a contract to install a pair of Pelamis machines off Islay within the Scottish Renewables Obligation and recently beat off stiff international competition to secure an agreement with BC Hydro, the Canadian West Coast utility, to carry out a full feasibility study for a 2MW scheme for installation off Vancouver Island during 2003.
Graeme Sword, 3i director commented: "OPD has developed a leading renewable energy technology which positions the business to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in the rapidly developing renewable energy market. The combination of this unique technology and strong management makes OPD an ideal fit for 3i in the development of our support for alternative energy technologies."
"NTV's role is to seek exciting investments with venture capital financial returns, in arapidly evolving new energy economy." says Jørgen Rostrup, NTV's Managing Director. "We screened several wave energy machines around the world before finding Pelamis, and are delighted to work with OPD and our co-investors in commercialising this concept."
"SAM is proud to be part of this exciting project in what we have identified as a highly promising new opportunity in the renewable energy space. Dr Richard Yemm has managed to gather an impressive group of talented people who have produced a design that stands out for successfully marrying robustness with efficiency," says Gianni Operto, principal of SAM Private Equity.
ends 20 March 2002
For further information please contact:
Ocean Power Delivery Ltd
Richard Yemm or Max Carcas
Tel: +44 131 554 8444
Email: enquiries@oceanpd.com
Web: www.oceanpd.com
It might not slow down the Earth and here's why... the oceans slow down the Earth by about 1/1000th of a second every year. If the energy is being taken from the ocean the tidal force *might* be reduced because the energy will be rerouted to my laptop. If the ocean has less energy then the force applied againts the earth should be less and it might speed up. Then we'll have to change the saying to 23:59/7
The URL you provided describes capturing wave power at the coastline, by installing a device into the rocks by the water.
This is completely different, a device that floats in the middle of the water and, better yet, can be chain-linked together in series. The installation expense looks to be much lower, and wouldn't damage coastlines either. In fact, you could probably install and use them when you're nowhere near a coastline, like near a free-standing drilling platform.
Forget about the problems of surfers crashing into these things -- what about a boat, I wondered? If a fishing trawler or passenger motorboat plowed through these things, they'd do serious damage to both themselves and the generators.
Then it occurred to me that they'd obviously want to mark these things off, along with painting them fluorescent orange to make them easily visible, to keep stray boats out of the area. Then I wondered about the impact on the fishing industry if these become widespread. Then it hit me: they could mark off a section of the water and use it both for fish farming and power generation. Double the economic benefits, and now you only have to worry about fish pirates in stealth submarines.
Back in the early 90s the danish inventor, Erik Skaarup, invented the wavebreaker and the design has been proven to work at an irish university.
It has (according to the studies) somewhat better effectiveness than the one mentioned in this article.
Read more here:
http://www.waveplane.com/indexuk.htm
- Miklos
* good judgement comes from experience - experience comes from bad judgement *
* good judgement comes from experience - experience comes from bad judgement *
Funny... Galileo, among the first to truly understand and explain many things in the world, wrongly used the tides as "proof" of the movement of the Earth, particularly its diurnal rotation. His theory was that the oceans "sloshed" because of the earth's spinning motion. Of course, we know that's not true: the tides are caused by the moon's gravitational pull as it travels around the Earth.
The ocean's sloshing action has no more effect on the Earth's rotation or the moon's orbit than water sloshing in a glass on a train affects the speed or direction of said train.
Extracting energy from the tides will no more affect the earth's spinning than putting up windmills to extract energy from the wind does.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
The unit described makes use of the height difference across waves, and has nothing to do with tides, from what I can see.
In the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, there is a small tidal power plan (experimental, I think). Basically as the tidal water flows in and flows out due to the big change in tides (highest in the world), power is generated.
It seems to me that there is more potential (so to speak
Of course, the construction costs to harness it, might be more than proportionately higher.
It seems to me, one big advantage to the tides is that they're 100% reliable, whereas wave action (like wind, and solar) will vary based upon weather.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
In my view, the main problem with solar/wind/tide/wave power generation is that we can't guarantee a steady flow of energy. Excess energy can't be stored for use when we need it. Solar energy is good as a supplementary source of energy for areas with high AC usage because when usually it's hot, the sun is out. But the problem still remains that we can't rely on any of these environmental energies for a constant flow of energy, which is what we need (Having lived in CA during the energy "shortage" recently, I know of what I speak).
I think we should be spending more time/energy (hah) researching methods to store large amounts of energy. Flywheels seem to me to hold good promise of extremely high energy density, efficiency and simplicity compared to schemes involving batterie or water <-> H2+0 schemes. Just don't put any on geologically unstable areas... Any other good energy storage devices in our future?
Oh yeah, I consider fusion research (hot/cold, laser pellet/toroidal plasma etc.) a huge waste of money and resources. We've already got a fusion reactor, damnit!
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
I could use one of these in my waterbed. Harness the wave motion from.... uh that may be offtopic.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The ocean's sloshing action has no more effect on the Earth's rotation or the moon's orbit than water sloshing in a glass on a train affects the speed or direction of said train.
m #t idefaqsq 1691.html
Extracting energy from the tides will no more affect the earth's spinning than putting up windmills to extract energy from the wind does.
It just depends on how much energy you subtract from the system. You can make a effect apparent, but I will admit that it may not be likely. Since the oceans do effect the rotation of the earth:
http://www.iit.edu/~johnsonp/smart00/lesson4.ht
http://www.itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/
then subtracting energy from the oceans *may* have an noticable effect *if* the energy is great enough. Even if it is not enough energy there will still be an effect (just not detectable by our instruments)
And if you actually *read* any of the top-moderated posts on the article you linked to, you'll see that the Moon would do the exact opposite. As you tap tidal energy (which the Scottish power plant doesn't, it taps wave energy) the Moon is pushed further away. Concervation of angular momentum is Highschool physics folks...
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
1 square mile of COASTAL ocean to harness enough energy to power only 22,000 homes? What kind of environmental price is this? And why is the BC gov't buying it? I'm really confused on this one -- especially since Blue Energy has been in operation here for years and has not been able to secure such a contract with a more powerful and environmentally responsible davis turbine setup to harness the ocean's currents which are very strong and predictable. As an added bonus, these systems can at the same time serve as a floating bridge. One such proposal has been made for the San Fransisco Bay. Check this stuff out!! (no I don't work for them, and don't have any financial interest there)
I wonder how these things will do during incliment weather. Guess I should go do some more reading. Heres another site about this type technology...:
Wave Energy
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
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."
Love the idea. On a practical level, we could power the entire world just from tidal energy - or even from the wind energy in the Western US or from the wind energy in the MidWest.
While the tidal generator might not be proven, we know we can implement wind energy today. In fact, the whole Western US/Canada energy crisis caused us to build more alternative energy in the US/Canada in the last year than we had built in the entire previous century.
A diversified energy supply would do us good - and locally-produced energy supplies are always better than energy from other sources. The more different sources we have, the less vulnerable to price fluctuations, the less vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Maybe I should pick up a board for use here in Seattle, huh? Got one in Santa Barbara CA and one in Mount Pleasant SC - might be fun to ride the pipe on the West Coast up in BC - heard the waves there are among the best in the world.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It's important, when discussing things like this, not to confuse Conservation of Energy and Conservation of Momuntum, nor to use the wrong one when determining cause and effect. Though both are always holding true, they aren't the same thing at all. Because Energy and Momentum aren't the same thing at all. For example, Momentum is a vector, while Energy is a scalar.
In this case, Conservation of Energy tells you that the waves must naturally lose energy if some is transformed into electricity by these farms. This is true. But Conservation of Momentum means that the total momentum of the system -- in this case Earth -- will remain unchanged. Thus it will have no effect on the Earth's rotation or position.
Launching rockets into space does effect the earth's position, because then you've expanded the system to not include just the Earth, and Conservation of Momentum only applies to systems, not components of systems.
The enemies of Democracy are
Check out: http://membres.lycos.fr/larance/main1.html (french), http://www.edf.fr/html/fr/decouvertes/voyage/usine /usine_d.html (french) or http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/usine /retour-usine.html (english).
The 240 MW figure comes from this page: the power plant contains 24 groups, eeach group able to ouput 10 MW.
What about getting energy from the temperature differences between the top and bottom of the ocean's water column? Or would that affect ecologies too much?
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I beleive you are missing something here. Momentum systems and energy systems are related closely. Take billiards as an example of the conservation of momentum. The balls hit each other and go off at different calculable angles and speeds, right? And the theory says the balls should bounce off each other forever, right?
Wrong. That's not what the theory says. Remember, CoE and CoM are -not the same thing-. What -you've- missed are the two very important points I made: 1) Momentum is a -vector- and 2) CoM only applies to closed systems.
So for billiards, as soon as a ball hits a table wall, the system must include the table when calculating momentum for CoM purposes. When the ball hits the table, some momentum will be transfered into the table. The momentum vector imparted to the table will be exactly opposite to the change of the momentum vector in the ball as it bounces. When you add the momentum vectors of all elements in the system before and after the bounce, you arrive at the same vector. CoM is satisfied. CoM does -not- require, nor even imply, that the ball will bounce away from the table wall with the same speed (magnitude of velocity, a vector) that it had before the bounce. Energy and Momentum are different, remember.
The energy is lost in the sound of the balls colliding, a little heat energy, and most of all friction. Momentum systems can and do lose energy, some people call it entropy.Momentum systems can't lose Energy, because my whole point is that they aren't the same thing!
Which, coming back to the wave generators, is how you can reduce the -energy- of the waves without affecting the -momentum- of the system.
The enemies of Democracy are
Woops, should have used preview. That should have said:
I never said nor implied that Momentum systems can't lose Energy, because my whole point is that they aren't the same thing!
Which, coming back to the wave generators, is how you can reduce the -energy- of the waves without affecting the -momentum- of the system.
The enemies of Democracy are
FWIW, I doubt anyone will die of starvation if Exxon-Mobil pulls their operations. I also suspect that Exxon-Mobil will continue to operate regardless of whether they can have their opponents murdered or not. (Indeed, I suspect the murders are the creation of over-zealous local bureaucrats who don't want anyone hassling their beloved economic giant rather than anyone within E-M themselves.)
I do think that anyone who looks at the evidence and claims it's all self defense is, frankly, delusional. It may not happen the way the Greens tell it, but it certainly isn't some innoculous either.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The turbines will stand 130 meters (426 feet) tall, are to be spread over 65 square kilometers (25 square miles) and supply up to 420 megawatts of power at peak. They'll be just visable from the shore at 8 kilometers (5 miles) distance where they should blur into the sea chop.
Scheduled to begin construction in 2003 and be operationial by 2005 the $600 million project has thus far kept on track and met all impact reviews. It has proven to be particularly economically viable in the ecologically sensitive but rapidly growing Cape Cod area which has unusually high energy rates and a large volume of steady offshore winds.
This isn't as unusual as wave turbines and the like (though it's size is notable) but it is a clever solution to the sound and sight pollution that have been issues with land-based wind farms. While not completely out-of-sight/out-of-mind these will be far enough from folks that they shouldn't be an issue. Furthermore these modern designs have incorporated lessons learned from previous generations and should be wildlife-friendly.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
> This won't solve our energy problems. It will help some though. It is only worth putting tidal plants in areas with large differences between high and low tide
The high tide and low tide height difference is trivial. Just to be absurd, let's assume the height difference is 10 meters. So that's potentially 10 meters of travel from low tide to high tide. Problem is, How much time does it take to move from high tide to low tide? We're talking about literally hours.
So lets look back in our physics book.
1 watt = 1 Newton * 1 Meter per second.
To keep math simple, lets assume that our energy capturing device relies on moving a column of water weighing 10,000 Kg. - converted to force, we have roughly 100,000 Newtons. Also to keep math simple, lets assume the tide moves once every 10 hours (I honestly don't know what's accurate).
10 hours equals 60*60*10 or 36000 seconds.
Our power output is now:
100,000 Newtons * 10 Meters / 36,000 seconds = ~27.8 Watts
or roughly the amount of power required to power a high efficientcy bulb. note that this is assuming 100% efficientcy!
IMHO, 27 watts is negligible considering such a huge column of water being moved.
Now lets look at the energy of each individual wave. To keep math simple, lets assume a moving column of water weighing only 10 Kg. (converts to roughly 100 Newtons of Force). Assume a wave height (amplitude) of only 1 meter. And lets assume a wave travels past every 10 seconds. Now we have:
100 newtons * 1 meter / 5 seconds = 20 watts.
That's roughly the same power output with only 10 Kilograms of water moving! Assuming we could extract the energy with 100% efficiency, were talking about a factor of 1000:1
Please note, I'm only nitpicking. (you could easily nitpick my crude math). I agree that Nuclear energy is underrated, but I felt that this technology should also be defended.
First, you consider a new, well run nuclear power plant with on site storage of all radioactive materials. The radiation output of such a plant should be zero. Then you measure the entire world consumption of coal, work out how much radioactive material there would be on average in all of that coal, and you get a large number. Compare the ratio of the two and you get an infinite amount. Everyone would probably agree that this is a very silly way to do a comparison.
So why is the coal radioactive? Sedimentary rock is made up of other rock that has been ground down, and then laid down as sediment - you have a wide mix of minerals in such rock. As a consequence, if you consider a large amount of any sedimentary rock you will find some radioactive material present - this is one of the sources of natural background radiation. So, if you go a step furthur, and consider VAST amounts of coal, oil or even foodstuffs, you will find large amounts of radioactive material. The difference between the radioactivity in a childs sandpit, an ash storage dam at a coal fired power plant and the lowest grade of nuclear waste to merit special storage is that of concentration of radioactive material. It would probably be extemely difficult to distingish the radioactivity in an ash heap from the background radiation.
Now the odd thing about heavy metals that people tend to forget, is that they are heavy. The cheapest form of anti-pollution equipment in a power station is to let the solid particles fall out by gravity - if you look at fifty year old plants they have at least that in place. The major material that is trapped in this process is silicon dioxide, and usually the aim is to trap extremely fine (sub-micron sized) particles of silicon dioxide. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the size of a uranium oxide particle that would weigh the same as a micron sized silicon dioxide particle - but I can tell you that it is very unlikely to get such a small chunk of material without trying very hard to get it.In short - if gravity seperation catches the light stuff it also gets the heavy stuff.
The situation with British Nuclear Fuels argues the opposite. I can't recall the exact number of hundreds of billions of pounds sterling they recently announced that they had lost - but a quick google search should tell. All of those rare earths used in the equipmnet are not cheap - plus none of the radiation resistant steels or iron based superalloys are cheap. I think you will find that this should read "with a new government subsity." Anyone can make a profit if an outside source keeps shovelling in money. Therin lies the problem - a concentrated source of radioactivity. Comparing this to a beach full of sand or a hundred ash heaps is missing the point. A google search will turn up dozens of incidents where the clueless have done silly things with nuclear waste - things like poorly trained staff stacking all of the drums very close together - so that everything gets nice and hot, and kids finding highly radioactive material form the USA in a dump in Mexico. It's the idiots that say "it's clean" that cause perception problems. We have the stuff, and use the stuff, but we should never pretend that it's clean.Dude, it was an April Fool's post from last year. I linked to it as a joke.
Chill.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
who drove the Exxon Valdez into Bligh Reef... it was a fully licensed, apparently sober, third mate who was qualified according to the US Coast Guard to be in charge of that ship in those waters. The job of guiding the ship from the pilot station to the exit of Prince William Sound at Cape Hinchinbrook should have been a no-brainer but the 3rd mate couldn't manage it despite having been told by a watchstander that the buoy marking the channel was on the wrong side of the ship.
I don't know why everyone assumes that the Captain was responsible for this; Exxon required him to submit a plethora of reports as soon as the pilot disembarked and he went down to his cabin to do it. He was never convicted of any criminal activity or found guilty of any liability. The USCG officers who claimed they could smell alcohol on the Captain's breath were in an environment similar to standing with their noses up your gas tank filler opening; millions of gallons of volatile vapors making it so difficult to breathe that some crew members put Scott Air Packs on to get to the bridge.
Statements like this are like declaring that your father is responsible for your car accident just because he is, after all, your father.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Worse, all the working parts are at the water surface, where they get the most pounding and accumulate the most crud. Most ocean systems try to put the important stuff either well above or well below the waterline.
Somebody is going to have to go out in a work boat and fix those turkeys, or tow them in for repair. Not fun.
The captain may have been drunk, or just drinking -- there is a difference.
But he was not on the bridge when the tanker hit. He was off-duty. His possible drunkeness had nothing to do with the disaster.
In the classic captain-is-responsible-even-when-he's-asleep sense, he was blamed, but he was a fall guy. That classic theory gets his bosses off the hook.
Exxon, to save money, had not installed up-to-date navigational subsystems. One of the richest companies on Earth was cheaping it. Hence the hit, hence the breach, hence the still polluted coastline.
Don't blame the poor bastard. Exxon's greed smashed his ship.
Agreed. And still, no one remembers this. After all, it would require getting the news from someone other than Jay Leno.
The big lies keep alive because people are too lazy, frankly, to pay attention. And unscrupulous men and women use this failing to promulgate amazing BS and gain power.
For truly amazing lies that achieve Truth, you can look at Vince Foster, Whitewater, the last election's "victory", the need for a Drug War, the imminent possibility that the communists were going to take us over any second now... sigh. How about UFO's? Most Americans believe they are alien spacecraft, and that the government, who in other cases can't be trusted to regulate commerce, is somehow ultragood at covering up ET.
I want a cookie...
The Pelamis device is substantially different from other wave systems I have seen. The usual trouble with wave power is that you put a lot of expensive equipment out in the way of the waves, and then a storm comes and the waves get too big and destroy it. Even Lake Michigan gets storms that will re-arrange boulders two yards in diameter; the waters off Scotland or Vancouver are far worse. But there is a lot of power there, so Pelamis designed for survivability in severe storms.
There's something weird about their website, so I cannot give you the URL to go straight to the how-it-works pdf. Navigate to Downloads, and open the bottom one: "'Water Power' magazine article". It's written by someone who never uses one short word where 4 long ones will do, so you might prefer my description:
The Pelamis generator is snake-shaped, made of many rigid steel cylinders jointed together, and floating on the surface. The head end is anchored and the snake swivels around it to keep the head into the waves. As the waves pass, it bends in the vertical plane, roughly following the shape of the waves. Each joint is attached to a hydraulic cylinder, so the bending pumps hydraulic fluid into an accumulator (pressure tank). Fluid from the accumulator runs a hydraulic motor to turn an alternator.
There are ways to tune the system response so it resonates with small waves to extract more power in relatively calm conditions, but as the waves get bigger it goes out of resonance so the energy extracted doesn't become more than the system is designed to handle. In a bad storm, it gives minimal opposition to the waves, so it doesn't get bashed like fixed installations. The weakest part is probably the anchor -- if that drags, the snake could get lost at sea or smashed into the rocks. This is roughly the same chance a ship at anchor runs, except that the snake is a much smaller cross section and so gets less drag, and also you can do things to secure the anchor like pouring concrete that ships don't do because they want the anchor back. OTOH, you don't anchor your ship out where the waves are biggest...
EDF, the French state company that has the monopoly of electricity production and distribution, has operated the Rance tide-power electric plant since 1966.
In these 35 years, turbine technology evolved a lot. However, a few lessons can be learned from the Rance test plant:
From an environmental point of view, let's just notice that the waves and currents are an essential factor of oxygenation. Mess up with it, and you'll end up with stinking, stagnant water à la Venice laguna.
So will this Scottish innovation ever be deployed on a large scale? Don't hold your breath.
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Damn it!! oh well, any way:
E = mc*c
p = mv
would imply otherwise.
No it doesn't. Look, E = m * c * c is a SCALAR in units of ENERGY, while p = m * v is a VECTOR in units of MOMENTUM. Not to mention that E = mc*c is an expression of the relationship between mass and energy, and thus really doesn't have anything to do with this at all, unless the tidal generators are powered by antimatter.
What, are you trying to say that I'm wrong because both equations have an "m" in them?
I know, I know, we aren't talking relitavisitic numbers. Any way I guess I don't understand what you are defining as "the system" and what components are in it.
I thought I was pretty clear in defining the system to be the earth. That's what we were talking about being slowed in it's rotation, isn't it? So you dampen the tides. The change in momentum in the tides is met by an opposite change somewhere else. Momentum is conserved. The earth doesn't slow down.
The enemies of Democracy are