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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?
I never tried escargot, and probably never will, but I saw snail, 30 ton and almost lost my lunch.
Isn't it great, where the State can mandate the advance of technology? This reminds me of that Simpon's quote "Young lady, in this house we obey the 2nd law of Thermodynamics!"
Who's to say that these energy mandates are even achievable, or desirable? Since they won't be affordable, all this does is create a new class of subsidized business, and executives to run the businesses, and higher taxes on (in the case of Scotland) an already under-performing economy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What good is a "downward force" if it doesn't do anything? The article doesn't explain how this downward force from hydrofoils produces any energy.
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!
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!
Doesn't this just steal energy from the moon? Leading to disastrous complications if our insatiable moon power lust is not quelled.
The article mentions that the device is able to "generate more than 200 tons of downward force to the seabed", but nowhere does it state how that force is used. A static force does no work and therefore can generate no energy.
5MW is good for 10,000 homes, so a house in Scotland only uses 500 watts of electricity?
Its powered by Tidal waves?
Really, how often do they have Tsunami there?
When they need to fix it, they'll be calling Christopher Lambert to walk under water and make the necessary repairs, right? Or will the maintenance crew be expected to ride one of those Scooby-Doobie things?
Yes, I have difficulties separating the real world from cinema.
I also reply below your current threshold.
The Heavyweight Sea Snail
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. In "Tidal farming's new wave," Red Herring explains this why Scotland is very supportive of 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.
Here is the introduction of Red Herring's article.
After losing the wind wars to the Danes in the early '80s, Scotland is on the verge of owning a small, yet significant new power market -- tidal energy.
Inventors have long dreamt of harnessing energy from the daily ebb and flow of ocean tides using underwater windmills. Yet a large-scale tidal farm has remained elusive -- at least, until now. Making use of Scotland's geographic assets and answering a renewed call for an energy alternative, Aberdeen scientist Ian Bryden is putting his new invention, "the Snail," to work.
So what exactly is the "Snail"?
At Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University, Mr. Bryden has circumvented traditional turbine designs. His brainchild, the Snail, is a 15x12 meter (roughly 49x39 feet) anchoring device that uses hydrofoils -- what scientists describe as wings that "fly" in water -- to generate more than 200 tons of downward force to the seabed. Six dragon-like wings attach the unit to the national grid.
Here is a picture of a prototype of the Snail with its six wings (Credit: Robert Gordon University)
Red Herring also says that the Snail will cost less than traditional technologies relying on turbines. So when will the Snails invade the seas?
The first experimental tidal farm, to be launched in 2007, will yield just 5MW at first, enough for around 10,000 homes. While possessing only enough energy to power less than one quarter one percent of Scotland's population, it would mark a significant first step for the emerging technology.
Scotland has identified Orkney's Pentland Firth and Shetland's Yell Sound -- about 330 miles north of Edinburgh -- as its best sites for harnessing tidal power. Both have sea channels and are exposed to the Atlantic, making the area a prime location for capturing big tidal movements. An energy test site has already been built using a local investment of 5 million pounds ($9.18 million).
Providing that this technology is licensed to one or several developers, other European countries will also be able to use Snails to produce clean energy at reasonable costs.
For more information, you might want to check this news release from Robert Gordon University, "University Research Team Poised for SNAIL launch."
Sources: Red Herring, March 25, 2004; Robert Gordon University
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
Things like this are amazing ideas and very, very, very important and will only be increasing more so. Oil won't last forever. You know it. i know it. Why beat around the bush (no pun) and say 10, 20, 50, etc years? Who gives a fuck *how* long we have....get on the ball and get renewable energy sources up past 95% of out uses.
Sad part is tanks and planes don't run on well wishes and rainbows, the US military and the non-efficient consumer vehicles have *got* to be brought under control. Go ahead and argue all you want. You are wrong and we have *got* to get off of energy sources that will run out.
Also, i'm happy this sort of thing is being done....just wish more and more stories of new energy studies (that don't involve how to make *more* money for oil companies) come from the US. We either need to get *everyone* behind this or it's not going to happen. People, in general, are lazy and won't change unless they have a personal interest or are forced to. Let's get some grants and scholarships for people doing this kind of work in the US.
Sorry for rambling and not spell checking.
I predict environmentalists will shit a brick because it might disrupt a few sea animals. Just like environmentalists hate wind power since some bird aren't intelligent enough to fly around the windmills.
Considering the cost of the alternatives (coal, natural gas, oil, etc) isn't even on their radar.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
According to this site:
"Currently, although the technology required to harness tidal energy is well established, tidal power is expensive, and there is only one major tidal generating station in operation. This is a 240 megawatt (1 megawatt = 1 MW = 1 million watts) at the mouth of the La Rance river estuary on the northern coast of France (a large coal or nuclear power plant generates about 1,000 MW of electricity). The La Rance generating station has been in operation since 1966 and has been a very reliable source of electricity for France. La Rance was supposed to be one of many tidal power plants in France, until their nuclear program was greatly expanded in the late 1960's. Elsewhere there is a 20 MW experimental facility at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, and a 0.4 MW tidal power plant near Murmansk in Russia. "
I also recall having seen articles talking about attempts in Norway to capture wave/tidal energy for electricity generation.
I'm always a fan of renewable energy. I just wanted to point out that this is more an attempt to do something in a new way than to do something new.
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
If there are many of these units in deployment, what are the chances that they will begin to alter or somehow affect the normal flow of water beneath the surface? And what kind of effect will this have on the ecosystem?
No energy technology supported by a UK government and reported on the internet will ever produce more power than was consumed in publicising it.
Corollary: No energy technology will be supported by a US government unless it can (a)power an SUV and (b) create explosions.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I don't know much about the initiative in question, so please don't read this as an unqualified endorsement. However, one factor that needs to be borne in mind when looking at the "affordability" of an alternate power source is its sustainability.
Energy from petrochemicals is not sustainable. It might be cheap - right now - but it's not going to last. Moving to sustainability while we have cheap petrochemicals to help us get there makes sense. I think it's high time that environmental costs, lack of sustainibility, and other "externalities" were factored in when comparing "affordability". Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Yes, now I know, Red Herring is a mag, not a person... thanks to the smartarse on the terminal next to me for pointing this out...
How was the parent post modded Score:0,Troll ?
It is a good point that if there were regulations like that in the US, things might be very different. I think few would argue that we depend on oil for to many of our energy needs.
The annoying part which neither the summary or the article address, is that a country is sovereign and is not *required* to follow regulations setup by another group. It may choose to take part in a treaty, or follow similar guidelines as other countries, but *required* is another story. But alas, there is no supporting information on said regulations and/or their origin, so we must blindly accept everything that is said!
But I digress....
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.
Then energy consumed will slow down the moon and it will collide with the Earth. We are all going to die. Oh the manatee!
as a butterfly flapping it's wings
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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...
The hydrofoils aren't generating power they merely provide a cheap way of holding a turbine down on the seabed.
Dude, the US is not the only country in the world. Want to bash countries for consuming natural resources? How about Indonesia, who has generated 40% of the world's CO2 since 1990 by burning off their natural forests.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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!
Actually, tidal friction slows the rotation of the earth and raises the orbit of the moon. Extracting tidal power will increase the friction and thus the rate at which this happens.
(Of course if there WAS a chance of bringing down the moon that would make for QUITE the "environmental impact".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In this case it's not oil that we are dependent on but COAL. Now while we mine coal right here in the US remember that coal mining is by far the most dangerous occupation in the US, for each coal plant in the US one coal-miner is killed each year in an accident. This doesn't count the long term healt and psychological effects that mining has on a person. Nor does it take into effects the polution generated by a coal plant. Sorry, but oil fuels some of our energy needs (heating and automobiles) but very little oil is used in electrical power generation.
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.
If this thing harvests the energy in wave power, then what happens... the waves behind it are smaller? Can't think of anything offhand that relies on waves to live/eat/etc, but I'm not a naturalist. Always a little wary of sucking energy out of the environment in new ways.
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.
The energy to power tides comes from the rotational
inertia of the earth and moon. Extracting power
from tides slows down the earth (making days long)
and makes the moon drive further away from the earth
(in order to preserve angular momentum.) Once all
the power is used up, the earth and moon will be
in tidal lock and a day on earth will last a
month. It will get very hot by midday, and very
cold at night. Most of life as we know it will
cease to exist on earth.
On the other hand, the power tied up in the rotation
of the earth is immense, and it is unlikely that
Scotland is going to reduce it by any measurable
amount. But still....
Since the Moon is actually increasing it's distance from us,
we should have a big buffer of orbital energy to steal.
Could be why it's so hard to go back after 30 years, it's so much further away.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
One big reason is the USA is huge compared to most countries. And these alternative power sources normally cost a lot more in setup cost then your average power plant. So it would cost us a lot more to go around building these things everywhere.
Another big reason starts with G ends with H. and has eorge W. Bus in the middle.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
C'mon, stop saying such reasonable things. Get out of the way and let the big energy interests scuttle their competition. They're powerful, and they'd like a market that's "free" to allow them to throw their weight around.
We're in very great danger of a socialist takeover because of this Sea Snail project. Honest. 'Cause there's never been an innovation encouraged by government that helped the economy at all. The British Government didn't encourage the development of chronographs by offering a "Longitude" prize, and don't you let those whiny liberals convince you otherwise.
(It's not like the government subsidized the nascent railway and airline industries, ever, by sending the mail through them, or anything like that. We'd never do something like that. Wouldn't be the good old American way. Nope.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Before I actually get on topic I have to wonder aloud, what ever happened to OTEC technology? I thought that it sounded like on of the most potentially viable alternative energy sources. Though you do have to have floating cities to use them :)
:)
I am curious how these regulations work out in reality; there is a growing movement in central Texas to try to push a 10% law through the Texas government.
I am afraid that the economics are against it, right now at current costs for oil, natural gas, and coal in Texas it is going to be more bottom line friendly to use traditional energy production. Any legislation mandated eco-friendly percentages are going to hike not only costs for that renewable energy but also electricity costs across the board.
Part of this is of course green energy is very expensive to develop and implement. But more importantly is because they can. Without competition prices are going to keep inching up at the rate that we are almost, but not quite, mobilized into a rampaging mob each year.
for the lazy who do not want to actually read all that I will conclude, renewable energy is nice but I doubt we will see it in the US at any scale untill non-renewable energy costs rise so the economics get better. If we try it before that happens the cure will be worse then the disease (astronomically rising energy costs)
Thanks for listening
There is no situation you can not make worse. -Jim Lovell
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.
Reading the linked articles, i don't think that their authors understood how this system is supposed to work.
My guess is that this is some pointy-hairbrained Plan B that they came up with at the last minute, after both Nessie and the Loch locals said "hell no!" to the treadmill/generator idea.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
I'm not too conversant with all the states relevent laws but, sadly, I think California is probably the most aggressive in that regard (though mightily mis-guided in some energy related areas).
I admire Scotland and others for their proactive approach, I just hope that it is enough. The overwhelming problem is convincing the population at large that there really is a problem approaching (more quickly that most realize).
That's why my sig promotes a discussion forum that's focused on Alt/Renewable energy. It's amazing how many newbies who just stop by to see what's up wind up building their own RE systems (limited as some of them may be) in just a short while. Even better, they do a great job of spreading the interest/infection to others around them.
We need to raise public awareness of the folly of long term fossil fuel dependence and sway the opinions and actions of the people we put in power.
I don't know why we bother putting our money into these centralised energy projects. Why not just mandate that all houses must have photovoltaics and solar heating installed? We just had solar heating installed, which works great even in sunny Britain. Photovoltaics would be more expensive (20K UKP expensive) but we calculate that they could provide about 120% of our idle energy needs, so at night the grid would actually have to pay us! :) The payback period would be ~ 6 years we estimate.
Just a little more thought, and the government could easily reach their European targets at little cost to themselves, and with no new R&D.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I couldn't find any mention of how they'll be using the 200 ton downward force of this 30 ton beast to create electrical potential.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Recylcing is a HUGE energy sink. But it's not about the energy-- it's about the raw materials. I'm surprised anyone would ever think for a second that recycling is about energy.
Of COURSE the pickup, processing, melting, and re-forming of materials is going to use a ton of energy. It does have other nice side-effects, though: less deforestation, less mining, etc...
It's a tradeoff. You spend energy to get material.
While it is true that coal mining is still a rather dangerous occupation, the polution generated by coal-fired power stations isn't as bad as many people belive. In the last few decades, coal has come quite a long way in reducing toxic emmisions. Modern coal plants combust the fuel much more completly, and are outfitted with high-tech (and very expensive) scrubbers to remove the really toxic byproducts (especially sulfer).
Considering that our coal supplies will long outlast our oil supplies, I think that its still a good idea to invest in cleaner coal technologies. Linky.
US simply borrows whatever magic solution the Euros have discovered in the mean time.
I think you mean "Pay through the nose for the patented technology the Euros have discovered in the mean time."
Let's outsource all R&D to other places! It's just a drag on the bottom line! We can always borrow some more to pay for it.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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.
What happens when we have sucked all the energy our of the ocean's surface? We will wake up to a perfectly flat sea and no one will be able to start their 100,000-HP hyper cars!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
No one expects oil to last into the next century. The expected to peak rather soon. What we really need is more government funded research into alternative energy so we can get off this oil train as soon as possible. Or at least be ready when it crashes.
Photos.
We already have a lot of fuel-saving technologies which will pay for themselves nicely at current prices (let alone future prices), yet adoption has been very slow. I can think of a number of causes:
- Tax subsidies which have the effect of paying users not to change.
- Outmoded regulations which slow or even block desirable change.
- Interest groups which resist changes which threaten their way of doing business.
- Simple inertia.
As an example of 3 and 4, I hold up the continued widespread use of stick-built construction when SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) leak a lot less heat, have next to zero air leakage when properly installed, and save a lot of time and labor in the construction. They also reduce the use of wood. We should be promoting or mandating their use where feasible and training builders and building inspectors in their proper installatino. Are we? No. I'll bet there are a lot of union carpenters who like it that way.Another is the relative lack of CHP (Combined Heat and Power, or cogeneration) systems in the USA vs. Europe. This may be due to power regulations which make it impossible to obtain a market price for the production of small generators, or far too expensive to connect to the grid save as a pure consumer. Again, this is something which can be fixed with proper regulatory changes.
There are questions not answered in the article about the snail, such as the handling of the variable output of the tidal power systems versus the contrary schedule of grid demand. These things must be dealt with; unfortunately, they are beyond the scope of small news items. What's truly a pity is that news editors don't think they are sufficiently important to collect links for further study.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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...
yeah you may be right - i think i misread part of it - my apologies... thought it may be a good idea - I'd like to know the difference of power generated via either downward force of wings to the standard propeller style
Not to nitpick, but coal mining is the number 2 most dangerous occupation in the world IIRC. Commercial fishing is substantially more dangerous.
What about mercury poisoning? Is it not true that due to burning coal the murcury content of most domestic freshwater fish, and some saltwater species is at a high enough level that eating fish too often (more than once a week) can lead to troubling accumulation of mercury in the body?
Bonus points for tilting the turbine so as to generate a lift moment downward and use it to produce some of its own downforce.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This has been a free service of the Original, Legitimate Deputies of the Physics Help And Roving Tutor System (OLD PHARTS).
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
An article in the Scottish press has more useful info.
It only generates 150KW. That's not much. Typical wind turbines generate 200KW to 700KW each, on windy days. (Average values are much lower.) Typical nuclear power plants generate 1,000,000KW. Powering a home takes about 1-2KW on average, so 10,000 homes require perhaps 15,000KW.
The SNAIL people want to move up to the 750KW range or so. That's more reasonable. As wind power people have discovered, having huge numbers of little turbines isn't cost effective. But somewhere around a few hundred KW per turbine, the economics start to work. If you can find a good site with steady wind. As with dams, there aren't that many good sites.
It will probably take several decades of operating experience to turn this into a reliable technology, just as it did with windpower. It's been half a century since the Grandpa's Knob loss of blade accident. The first big power-generating wind turbine oversped and threw a blade several hundred feet. For many years, nobody built one that big again. Gradually, the aerodynamics and control problems were figured out. It's taken that long to make large wind turbines work reliably and profitably.
Anything with moving parts in the ocean is likely to be high-maintenance. Making one of these things work reliably for decades will be tough. Maintenance will be costly. There's no guarantee of success.
In short, there's no breakthrough here until it's been running for a few years without breaking.
I'd call it corporate socialisim.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
True, but you're ignoring the sunk cost of picking up said trash to begin with. If the stuff has to be hauled away to a landfill or hauled away to a recycling facility, then there's no net energy consumption for recycling. The "far more energy than what is gained from recycling" assumes that if the trash wasn't picked up by recyclers, it wouldn't be picked up at all.
That said, recycling is horribly inefficient- mainly because of contaminants and/or separation requirements in the process flow. It is also very costly in terms of man-hours to recover valuable (saleable) materials.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Like the tidal energy isn't coming straight out of the moon. Won't be very easy to renew when we've used this one up.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Socialism is not perfect, but neither is Capitalism.
CAPITALIST MAXIMS:
1. Plan short-term strategies to maximize profit; never mind the long-term consequences. If you don't, your competitor will and you might not last long enough to plan your next move.
2. Profits are maximized when people are discontent; they're better consumers than those who are happy with what they already have.
So here we are, metaphorically driving at night without our lights on. Sounds like a great idea!
Let's just sit back and let our descendants worry about coastal flooding around the world (read google news and search for greenland). Ha ha, suckers!
My bad, the formula in paragraph 2 should have read:
E=(1/2)(1000kg*100)(10m/s)^2 = 5e6 joules
The answer is the same; just a typo.
okay, I'll bite:
1 - yeah, it's probably no worse than the current situation, though most folks complain it's pretty bad right now.
2 - I'll buy that one
3 - I'll buy that too, but we buy lots of things from countries where people hate us: China - everything, most of Africa - minerals, France - wine (sorry, couldn't resist the dig on France)
3a - I've always maintained that Oil has little to do with Iraq. It all comes down to a phone conversation overheard in January 2001, when an unidentified speaker remarked "Don't worry, Dad, I'll get him for ya!"
4 - That's what illegal's are for. They have most of the nasty, filthy poultry processing jobs in the US.
5 - Oil generally has very high specific stored energy, but it is quite complex to extract that energy (ever looked at a modern engine schematic?). Right now, electric power is not viable because the Big 3 have not yet found it profitable to switch. Can you imagine how expensive a modern internal combustion engine would be to build from scratch, without a tuned assembly-line approach? That's where electric is.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
for each coal plant in the US one coal-miner is killed each year in an accident
Only 30 people died in Coal Mining Accidents last year. There are 1586 Electrical plants that use coal. That's one death for every 53 plants.
It only took about 1 min using google to find this data, next time please research your fantastic claims.
http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coaldaily.asp
So, when the tide changes, and this device reverses its direction, do you have unplug all of your appliances and flip the plug over to accomodate for the reversed current?
DO people simply not realize that all of these "Renewable" methods alter the environment? It can range from minor actions such as changing tidal patterns to larger ones that can lead to major changes over time. Don;t get me wrong I fully support renawable sources for energy but people do need to realize that the energy does have to come from somewhere. One windmill will not change much in the way of air patterns but hundreds of farms certainly will. For anecdotal evidence I provide this slightly off topic rant about my childhood home of Dallas Texas: Every year it seams that teh summers are getting wetter and wetter, As it turns out they really are and it is due primarily to teh changing of the eco system by people who want green lawns and pools, Grass releases much more moisture into the air ( especially with maint and watering) than does sage bruch and the like and damming up the rivers creates lakes ( there are no natural lakes in Texas) and increases evaporation again. The result: Much more atmospheric moisture increasing heat (perceptual (I would rather it be 110 and 15% humidity than 110 and raining)and real (moisture traps heat much more effectively than simple air))
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
California (US) wind farms are having trouble with environmentalists over the number of birds that run into windmills. I don't see any information on this "snail" related to preventing fish and other marine life from being negatively impacted.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Sea water is a very aggressive thing. How they are going to keep mechanics oiled and sealed? How they are going to service these things, it won't be trivial. How they are going to transport electricity -- they'll need underwater high woltage power lines that don't suffer from salted water either. It could work for small towns near the shoreline but no more...
The next one in the pipe is ITER.
Don't forget Canada and Spain as potential homes.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Yes, I understand that waves are a function of the moon's gravity, but the energy extracted was going SOMEWHERE before the 30 ton snails moved in.
Before they build this, they should consider one thing: how hard would it be to kill this thing in Contra? Because you just know it's going to become self-aware and make itself boss of the underwater level.
And this was moderated 'insightful'...?
Try running the numbers. We have to worry about losing the Moon and biodiversity from abstracting tidal energy to roughly the same degree we have to plan in advance for the Earth being consumed when the Sun turns Red Giant...
Other more viable source of energy based on a conventional wave-approach from Denmark (as the windmills), can be viewed here: http://www.waveenergy.dk This project concentrates the waves and leads them through turbines. This should be used as a reference to the flow ankrored underwater turbines. I still think the underwater turbines are to difficult to maintain, and to expensive to build....
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.
(listens)
Oh, so you say he'll have expanded to a few orders of magnitude beyond his current size, and be all red and evil looking? Well, what kind of friend is that?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I'm not going to claim that I know a lot about wind farms, and I'm not a helo pilot (my eyesight's not good enough, so I'm stuck on the boat), but I really fail to see how a wind turbine on land is going to seriously interfere with a helo-op taking place on the water. There's plenty of radio towers that are just as tall as a wind turbine in our area, and I've never seen either a CG or Medevac chopper have a problem with any of them. Now, if these turbines were being built partially submerged, half a NM out in the water or something, that'd be a different story.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Some stats from 2002: http://money.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P63405.a sp
It states that mining is the most perilous industry as a whole to work in. This is US stats only, not world though.
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
Erm, America does not exist. There are two continents, North America, and South America, which contain various countries, one of which is The United States of America.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I am aware of the tragedy of the commons, but your application doesn't make sense. Any person that consumes less resources with the same productivity than his or her competitors is at an advantage with less costs. That is what being more efficient means: doing more or the same with less resources. The premise of the tragedy only applies when individuals become less efficient compared to their competitors from helping the common good. So I reiterate: It is cheaper for individuals to be more efficient, because that is the definition of efficiency!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
a pregnant one?
(it's a joke, i don't wish to offend anyone who is pregnant, or trying to become pregnant, or trying to get me to get them pregnant.... ok mostly the last group...)
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
Yeah it really annoys me that the word America has become synonymous with USA. Btw, Scotland is not a country either ;)
Scotland is not a country either
No shit? That's definitely news to me... Explain.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
..isn't a seperate country but part of Great Britain since 1707? Welcome back to earth..
I'd like to see numbers. I am an "environmentalist", but I'm too much of an engineer/skeptic to take stuff at face value. (Please do not associate an engineer's environmentalism with the nutcases who give simple ideas like efficiency a bad name by strapping themselves to baby seals) Sending trucks to pick up bottles, labor/machinery to sort and remove things like labels and rings of different materials, and the energy to melt down, purify, and re-form materials seems like it would be on par with the digging, shipping, and forming of material in the first place.
This will depend greatly on the material, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if some materials are gains and others are losses.
Without more data, though, my gut tells me that recycling is good, but not so much because of energy savings, as you say.