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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.
Let's hope it does better than the Salter's Duck. The development project was cancelled in the 1980's after UK government departments grossly over-estimated (by a factor of 10) the cost of the electricity it was going to produce. Cock-up or conspiracy?
Don't we have regulations like that over here in the US? And how come I managed to get first post? Is the apocalypse coming?
It seems that a fair amount of research into new power plants is coming to fruition - the latest New Scientist had an essay on the JET (Joint European Torus) breaking even on its power budget for nuclear fusion. The big argument now is not whether to build one that ought to provide 10x its input requirements, but where to build it (France or Japan, from memory).
With windfarms (popping up all over Scotland and the exposed areas of England - presumably Ireland as well, that's one hell of a windy place
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It seems we could quite happily reach our targets. Our 3rd largest city, Aberdeen, will be powered solely by wind in the near future (as a large wind-farm out at sea is in the pipeline. Quite ironic, as Aberdeen is the oil capital of europe :). IIRC The Isle of Skye may also have a windfarm and there's a couple more planned.
Forget about solar energy though, our annual sun quota (approximately one day, give or take a few hours) would provide enough energy to power a digital watch. For a few minutes. Just.
While they don't say so in the article, it would appear from the picture of the device that there is a medium diameter horizontal axis generator on the dorsal surface, and the six foils are going to generate the downforce required to anchor the device to the bottom.
This is just from looking at it, obviously not from the plans. One of the challenges they would face with any form of tidal or current energy device is how to keep the thing in place. With the foils, I can see issues with keeping it in position, but it does seem like that's what they're trying to do.
There's probably also a hard mooring to keep it from drifitng away at slack tide, which would also allow it to change facing when the tides change direction or the currant shitfs.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
However, a vocal minority of people complain that they look too ugly, are too big, ruin the view, etc, and have been able to use lawsuits and regulatory processes to prevent them from being built. As you might expect, they're also trying to convince the state legislature to pass strict regulations governing where and how they can be built.
I know this isn't an isolated incident. There was a plan to build a windfarm in the atlantic ocean outside of massachussettes. "Not in my backyard."
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The City of Austin (Texas) owns its own power company and has mandated that it will generate 10% of its power from renewable sources over the next 10 or 20 years. It will be interesting to see how successful they are.
Except that there are distinct advantages to being second in such a case. Let the Euros make the huge investment in R&D for feasible alternatives, while the US continues to enjoy cheap energy via petroleum. Then, if/when oil becomes economically infeasible, the US simply borrows whatever magic solution the Euros have discovered in the mean time.
Sometimes it's cheaper and easier to let someone else do the pioneering.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Have servo motors move the wings to lift the entire structure upward. This would "arm" the device for the power stroke. The power stroke would come from tilting the wings dramatically downward. This would provide 200 tons of pressure to work a pump that could pressurize sea water that turns a more efficient turbine.
I parked a number of times at the (old) Austin airport, and noticed that the acres upon acres of asphalt would have been a great place to hang solar panels over. "Shingling" carports with some sort of solar collector would have had the dual benefit of generating energy and keeping the vehicles below from cooking in the sun (one wonders how much those cars contributed to smog from evaporative fuel emissions; you can't purge a vapor-recovery canister when the car isn't operating).
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Your $55 electric bill might be small, but your 570 KWh usage isn't. Here, in SoCal, that would cost you something like $100. I know, because I used that much during the summer. We are alloted a maximum number of KWh per month, based upon location and house size (yada, yada). Usage over that amout is billed considerably higher. I'm allotted 313KWh, used 447 last month, and was billed $35 plus $24 for overage.
There's a pilot plant outside Philly, and another in Montana or Missouri (don't remember).
With this available, I just wish we were far sighted enough to pop these up all over the country to process any and all recoverable waste. With this as an option, the need to drill for oil becomes greatly reduced if not eliminated.
It has absolutely nothing to do with being spoiled children, it's that our taxes on fuel use are not at the obsurd levels applied in many parts of the world. Just how much better would it be if the mostly hidden tax on gas wasn't there. Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, MD tax rate is 23.5 cents a gallon. Someone come up with a single reason why gas should have a 26% tax on it?
If you stop the knee jerk reaction, why are fuel prices in Europe so much higher than the US three times in some cases? Taxes. $2.82 out of every $4.07 gallon in France is tax. It's just insane.
This seems an interesting project, though another project in Scotland, the Pelamis seems more interesting and closer to completion. A an old Uni mate of mine works at Ocean Power Delivery which has spent the last few years developing the Pelamis, which is basically a 120m long 3m round articulated snake. A working full-scale prototype is currently getting installed in a channel around the Shetland isles. The software and control systems seem really interesting due to the large amount of backup systems and the use of FPGAs.
I do hope everyone realizes what an impact this will have on the environment. This installation will be fairly small, but what if this idea expands? We will permanently alter the currents of the ocean, and no one will be able to predict how.
Even this small installation will extract 5MW from the ocean currents. Energy that would have gone on to do something else.
I'm very concerned about the lack of foresight for supposedly environmentally friendly energy production. Think about it:
Huge windmill power stations will extract their energy from the air. Altering our atmospheres natural flow.
Huge solar plants will abosorb their energy from our sun. That energy would have heated our soil, been absorbed by plants, been reflected back into the atmosphere, etc...
Geothermal generation will cool our planets core faster.
Tidal generators will alter the oceans natural currents, etc...
People don't think about the impact because all of the existing installations of these types are fairly small.
Think about replacing a nuclear power plant with a tidal generator. You are sucking an entire nuclear power stations energy output from the ocean! Don't you think that might have some sort of consequences? And that's just one nuclear power plant. There are dozens!
The only solution is to be more efficient, not to try and generate more power.
This is why I design/build super effecient personal transportation. Check out my website
Sorry folks, energy aint free, we are just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
And unfortunately Peter is our children...
"Personally, I'm not too worried, because right around the time that oil gets really scarce, all of the hundreds of alternative solutions that are already fairly mature will suddenly become viable"
Maybe. But you should be worried, very worried. Gasolene is not the only thing we make out of oil, you know... byproducts are everywhere... think plastics, for instance. Look around you, and start counting/writing it down. If all of a sudden, you have to replace every single piece of plastic around you with something of similar properties, *and* just as cheap, what would you use??? Composites? Too expensive. Metal? Enormous energy cost to mine, clean, smelt, shape/cast. Wood? Not the same. Anything else?
Once oil is done, we're screwed economically. It's not *just* the gasolene...
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
Lol. Good troll. Lots of countries get called something else in foreign countries. In English speaking countries we call it "Germany". In French speaking countries they call it "Allemagne". But in German speaking countries I believe they call it Deutchland. This is a very common phenomenon.
You can't really control what foriegners call you. I suggest you try to get used to it.
One of the later contributors to this thread claimed that since Virginia was the first English speaking colony in the Americas, the United States should get to claim the name "America" for the country it eventually became a part of. Lol.
But wasn't Amerigo Vespuci Italian? So what does he have to do with the USA? Lol.