The Heavyweight Sea Snail

Roland Piquepaille writes "Scotland, like many European countries, must comply with regulations requiring that a mandatory percentage of the energy it uses comes from renewable sources. For Scotland, this percentage will be 18% in 2010 and 40% by 2020. One of the programs in development is Ian Bryden's sea 'Snail' program. The Snail is a 30-ton anchoring device which uses hydrofoils -- wings that 'fly' in the water -- to generate enough power from tidal waves to service 10,000 homes by 2007. This overview contains more details and a picture of a prototype of the Snail with its six wings." There are several mentions of this in UK newspapers and the Scottish government webpages.

Comments

Whew. . .

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I never tried escargot, and probably never will, but I saw snail, 30 ton and almost lost my lunch.

They must be stopped!

[machine of god]

This is all part of an alien conspiracy to bring the moon crashing down on us! Awaken to the truth before it's too late!

Is this really renewable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this just steal energy from the moon? Leading to disastrous complications if our insatiable moon power lust is not quelled.

Re:Power supplies

[bennomatic]

It's really nice when this sort of thing happens, isn't it? I mean, if they've got strong winds, why not use them? If they've got strong tides, why not use them?

Now if they could only capture all those lemmings and hook them up to little hamster wheel generators around the time they start running toward the sea, they'd have an energy surplus they could sell off cheap!