First Commercial Sub-Sea Tidal Power Station

daksis writes "New Scientist is reporting that the first commercial sub-sea tidal power station has gone online in Hammerfest Norway. 'The power station, which resembles an underwater windmill, began generating electricity for the town of Hammerfest. Although still largely a prototype, the generator is the first in the world to harness the power of the sea and be connected to an electricity grid.' If they can make the technology commercially viable, then we'll have yet another weapon in the arsenal for producing cleaner energy."

Comments

Think of the fish!

[FroMan]

Okey, why was there no mention of how many fish are going to get killed by this device?

Windmills kill birds, wavemills will kill fish!

Somebody think of the fish!

</sarcasm>

Sounds cool. I am all for multiple sources of energy, but one thing many folks forget is that there is a certain amount of environmental impact through all energy sources. These will probably affect the coast lines in some fashion I would guess. I wonder if we'll hear about the different problems these will cause, and have greenpeace or something yelling how they are evil? I guess we'll see.

Not the first

[Cy Guy]

The Annapolis Tidal Power station at the mouth of the Annapolis river in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy has been running (and providing power to Nova Scotia Power's grid) since the mid '80s. (this PDF of a magazine article provides more info.)

While considered a "pilot" operation, it does generate 20 MW of power, supplying the electrical needs for 4500 customers.

Re:Not the first

[canthusus]

The Annapolis Tidal Power station at the mouth of the Annapolis river in Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy has been running (and providing power to Nova Scotia Power's grid) since the mid '80s

Impressive though the Annapolis station is, it's not a "sub-sea tidal power station". It's a good old-fashioned tidal barrage. They're a little out of fashion at the moment, because of their effect on salt marshes etc. Ideally, of course, the story would have described it as "the first sub-sea tidal power station of its type to be connected to the grid" - that gets round all objections!

Incidentally, there are other sub-sea turbines being built. This 300 KW system in Devon, UK, is being tested (but ain't connected to the grid). It was discussed in slashdot back in June.

Not completely renewable

[tjgoodwin]

I guess if the USA ever adopts tidal farms, future generations can look forward to a president (massively funded by the tide industry, of course) attempting to derail any action over Global Slowing...

tidal power isn't new

[misterpies]

>>the generator is the first in the world to harness the power of the sea and be connected to an electricity grid

That's plain untrue. Tidal barrages -- which use the tidally-driven flow seawater in and out of a river mouth or basin -- have been used to generate electricity for decades. A barrage across the Rance, in northern France, opened in 1967 and has been generating enough power to supply 200 000 homes ever since.

Re:tidal power isn't new

[isorox]

But thats not an underwater one - well obviously some of it is underwater, but its still has a visual impact

Re:tidal power isn't new

[misterpies]

I fully accept that -- but the original post was claiming that this was the first time the "power of the sea" had been harnessed to a national grid in any way, not just via an undersea solution.

But to be really nitpicking, I should point out that it's not the power of the sea being harnessed at all -- it's the power of the moon. Or strictly, the earth-moon gravitational field.

10 meter blades...

[spineboy]

10 meter blades that they have are spinning quite slowly - I'm sure the fish could easily swim out of the way. I'm sure they also wanted to avoid seaweed and have some sort of filter/fence to prevent stuff from clogging up the blade.

power of the sea?

[Derek]

"Although still largely a prototype, the generator is the first in the world to harness the power of the sea..."

Should that be "...to harness to power of the moon..."?

-Derek

Re:But, what about?

[Smidge204]

Tidal power tubines spin rather slowly - About 25RPM. And they're not sharp like high-speed turbine blades.

A 10-meter turbine (5 meter radius - about 16 feet) spinning at a top speef of 20RPM (about 2 radians per second) would have a tip speed of about 11 meters per second (~33 feet per second).

That's pretty slow. 30MPH actually. But that's a conservative estimate.

Also, unlike hydroelectric dams, there's no strong current sucking everything into the blades - just tidal currents.
=Smidge=

Power

[isorox]

The tidal mill produces 300-kilowatts of electricity - enough to power 30 Norwegian houses or 60-80 British homes

Or half of a slashdotters basement

If only it was that easy

[chia_monkey]

It would be nice to use all these nice, clean, efficient methods of generating electricity but I can't help having a little skepticism. It's amazing what a little political involvement, some lobbying, and big bucks can do. It's really sad that we can't truly preserve the planet because of the deep pockets of some major oil companies.

"Oops, our tanker just leaked some crude and it somehow sank down and ruined your generators. sorry"

Re:Cleaner Energy?

[Sylver Dragon]

Even solar has problems with the environment. At Solar One (and presumably Solar Two, which used the same setup), there was a problem with birds flying into the mirrors at full speed, which tended to be a bit fatal for the bird. Also, considering the amount of concentrated sunlight near those towers, I wonder how a bird fared if it flew through. It was probably like passing through a solar oven.