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Tidal Power a Reality
updog writes "Here's an interesting story about a city in Norway using an underwater
turbine to generate electricity. It doesn't produce much power (300kW) but maybe it'll pave the way for these types of power plants. Maybe one under the Golden Gate someday??"
What kind of environmental concerns will be raised about this? I remember the project in Canada or whatever (name slips me right now, some big bay) that was being considered for damming to produce tidal power. However, because of the amount of water involved, it would change water levels all over the world. Obviously, this does not involve a dam, but wouldn't the turbine harm aquatic life, and how would the turbines disrupt normal sediment flow?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
I guess it's a good idea, but what kind of effect would we get if we start putting huge turbines in
the oceans that affects the currents? E.g. Mess with the Gulf stream, and Scandinavia will get a
rather cold climate.
...maybe it'll pave the way for these types of power plants. Maybe one under the Golden Gate someday?
All right, irregardless of the fact that placing a turbine under the Golden Gate bridge would be a hazard to shipping, it would give off enough power to, what, light up Pier 39? BFD.
If you take a look at the article, it says:
<I>The biggest tidal power plant in the world is a barrage across the La Rance river in northern France, in place since the 1960s. It has a 240-megawatt capacity, but Electricite de France has no plans to build new ones.
Canada's Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world, at about 39 feet. Nova Scotia Power's 20 megawatt plant at Annapolis Royal, built in 1984, is the only one in North America, but the company is now focusing more on wind. "There are ecological objections to building more tidal plants along the coast," said Margaret Murphy, spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power. </I>
What does that tell you? That this new station is bigger than France's entry by !60! Megawatts. And that where the biggest tides are, they decided to go into windpower instead. Why? Let me repeat:
<I>"There are ecological objections to building more tidal plants along the coast," </I>
Before you go wishful thinking, read the article.
The most interesting part about most renewable energies is, once the infrastructure is implemented, how passive energy production becomes. Solar panels just sit there and take energy that would be absorbed into the ground or reflect back to space. Wind and tidal power use two of the most fundamental components of our planets existence as we know it. Maybe geothermal power would be another to consider, or tectonic power.
Either way, what seems a bit ironic about how these energies are collected is how inefficient the collection process actually is. In fact how inefficient we deliberately aim to make it. We use such a small part of an enormous source of energy that it has virtually no affect on the environment. No one every argues that solar panels are going to take up all the sun's warmth and freeze our planet. Squeezing every ounce of energy sources has been the pitfall of almost all previous endeavours. Dams destroy river ecosystems. Coal and oil pollute beyond comprehension.
PS. I'd still rather have nuclear power than oil power.
sig
I'm not sure why this is even a big deal. As the article states there are bigger and better tidal power stations. The La Rance power station in France has almost 8 times the capacity and is 40 years old.
Nothing earth shattering that I can see.
Slashdot comments can be accurate, highly modded, or posted quickly. Pick two.
300 kWh may not be much on its own, but it may be better in the long run to rely on many smaller forms of energy production than a few large, heavily centralized systems that rely on actively polluting fuel (ie, coal, oil, gas, nuclear). A combination of wind turbines, solar arrays, and hydroelectric generators could be enough to take much of the load away from large fossil/nuclear plants, thus reducing the amount of fuel those facilities need to use.
I have this notion in the back of my head of new homes, and many older homes, being upgraded to include some small form of power generation - a solar array, or more likely a small wind turbine, to supply at least a bit of the home's own needs. Since you can still have a grid power system, homes can supplement each other, cutting part of the grid wouldn't necessarily cut all the power.
The expense would be horrid until these devices became more common, and energy companies could make up for losses in pure energy sales by providing maintanence and installation packages - that is, if you're the kind of capitalist that looks for these kind of opportunities.
Think of it as having a network where, instead of one big central server trying to handle everyone's programs and data, each host can handle most of its own data and processing, and the server's just there for the things that the hosts can't handle on their own:)
Opinions and nitpicks about this greatly appreciated...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
but is anyone else getting the feeling that the whole project is based on poor planning?
The article mentions four or five better ways to generate power but this is how they're going to do it dammit!
Look, I'm all for green power. I like the idea, but it seems to me that the whole thing is in the shitter to start with. The conditions that make it good for power generation make it bad for maintenance. It's possibly the most expensive to implement with little to no extra gain over wind or solar. Where's the payoff?
In short, how is this better than umpteen other green power generation implementations with less start up costs, lower maintenance costs and fewer headaches?
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
OK. Now the moaning. The big problem is that people are always thinking in terms of "free" energy at the time of the electricity generation, instead of the Total Cost of Ownership, which includes the construction of the thing. Others have pointed this out, but I wanted to focus on the fallacy of romanticizing electricity generation with free fuel.
The second thing is that with this, the bulk of whatever environmental damage occurs will be largely invisible. Still it might be very limited.
Again, let me say that I am not against this project. I hope that this sort of thing leads to better technologies that are eco{nomically,logically} rational. We shouldn't expect a new thing to reach that at such an early trial. But again, I wish that people wouldn't romantize electricy generation based on "free" fuel sources.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Damn that's clever. It is, in fact, goatse. Normally, I don't trust AC's saying "It's goatse!" so I'm warning signed in. That's pretty damn good though. I caught it by reading the address when I hovered over, but you almost got me. If the url was a little more obscured, that would be totally inpenetrable.
Anybody know of a way to manualy enter a domain to block images from in Phoenix? Having to go there and right click the image to not have to see it again... it's like killing Hitler as a baby, only with gaping assholes. *shudder*