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Green Energy Now, And On The Tide
thpr writes "The Electric Power Research Institute and its partners have completed their Offshore Wave Power Feasibility Demonstration Project, which defined potential wave energy projects off the shores of the United States. This is building off of work already done in Scotland (and elsewhere). San Francisco, New York and other areas are considering trial installations of the technology. It is interesting to note (table 1 in the report) that the energy density (kW/m^2) that can be achieved is much higher than wind or solar. In addition, harnessing 24% of available wave energy near the US at 50% efficiency is equal to all of the hydropower currently generated in the US (~7% of total electricity production). On a separate note, in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's $1.2B 2006 budget the Department of Energy is closing out the Hydropower Technologies Program. Maybe that's why this technology is missing from our National Energy Policy?" Until it reaches maturity, though, U.S. readers can pay for other forms of green energy.
nothing for you to "sea" here?
Don't forget nuclear power!
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Those electrical generators are going to TOTALLY kill those waves I wanted to surf. Oh MAN.
Seriously, though, it's a clean source of power, but what kind of impact will it have on coastal areas? No more beach fish spawning, no more killer waves to surf, and the area where these will be deployed will become almost like kiddie pools.
24 percent is a lot .. that's basically thousands of miles of coast. For what? 7% of energy? And what about maintenance costs? Effects on marine life .. Imagine dolphins or whales getting caught in this .. ships .. can ships operate safely?
Is when nuclear energy is going to be put back on the agenda. I mean compared to coal it is squeaky clean!
...but it simply isn't practical yet. It may save the planet, but it won't save us, the consumer, the other form of "green" which we require to engage in other useful activities such as eating and not sleeping out in the rain.
As great - or as needed - as green energy may be, we'll never see widespread adoption of it. At least, not so long as the oil industry exists.
Most likely this will have massive effects on oceanlife and beachlife in the areas they are installed. I view it as a technology with its uses but the greenies have yet again started blabbing about how ecofriendly it is without thinking about the true long term consequences.
because we start to really depend on it.
can these things survive a Tsunami?
In other words, these projects affect the currents, at least locally which in turn *will* affect the biological systems that depend on these currents, to what extent? I don't think we know.
We need alternate energy, but we need to honestly compare the impact of each energy extraction method we consider. Personally, I think nuclear is the lowest impact energy tech.
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
Do people know of any serious downsides to wave energy ?
I hear that you cant put it in densly populated water ways, as it really impeeds boats moving (at least the surface variety, are there deep buried kinds, too ?).
If anyone could comment on the negatives of this, it'd be nice to see the other side. For instance, wind power is usually cited as an eyesore, and solar as having problems w/ where you are located (same w/ wind to some extent).
Of course I have not RTFA, but imagine the power spike if a future mega tsunami washes over these electical generators!
"Yes, buildings about 1 to 2 kms inland are all wasted, but free electricity for a month! wahoo!!"
Friends don't let Friends use Internet Explorer.
Both power providers and consumers need to work in harmony: (1) the power companies are to increase the efficiency in generating more power and (2) the consumers are to utilize the available energy in an efficient manner.
/.ing. You can do a little to cut some energy expenses by following these actions. In reality I am not going to save over $20 a year. But when people start doing the same, it soon becomes a real money.
There isn't much I can do for (1). But I can do for (2) by replacing light bulbs with energy saving bulbs (ESBs, or compact fluorescent bulb that fits in an incadescent lamp), turn off the light where not needed, and turn the damned TV when
It is interesting to note (table 1 in the report) that the energy density (kW/m^2) that can be achieved is much higher than wind or solar.
Yeah, but what about what really matters -- kilowatt hour per dollar.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Once we install enough tidal energy collectors, there will be no more big waves. Before long, all the newspapers will be full of stories about sad and lonely surfers:
"Dude, I heard about a gnarly 1 foot wave off the coast of the Bering Strait."
"Woah, what are we waiting for? Let's grab our boards and ride!"
Won't someone please think of the surfers!
Interesting how these wave generators wind up at whisky-distilling islands. Orkney has the wonderful Scapa and better known Highland Park, not to mention the Orkney Brewery. Islay, meanwhile, with its seven working distilleries has much of its electricity generated by a 'Limpet' wave generator. (See http://www.fujitaresearch.com/reports/limpet.html for more.) Environmentally friendly power: it's just one more good thing about Scotch Whisky!
I want to play Half Life for longer than 30 minutes on my notebook without recharging. Make that possible and all the funding cuts Boosh can think won't be able to stop you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
...from a people who invented The Fried Mars Bar. There isn't anything "green" about burning methane or lard.
If you are taking energy out of the oceans, then ultimately you are taking heat out of them. Sorry - no free rides.
Wave power is a total ridiculosity - you want to sacrifice TWENTY FOUR PERCENT of US coastline in order to supply SEVEN PERCENT of the electricity.
This is our electricity usage BEFORE we tack on the electricity used to power our hydrogen cars, which will raise our consumption an order of magnitude.
Using algal biodiesel, breeder fission(with development on fusion), and wind where suitable, are the only remotely practical eco-friendly choices that are sustainable - Photovoltaic trumps them all, but to convert even just our current electrical needs to photovoltaic would cost more than we've spent on imported oil since we started importing oil. We could create an infrastructure to supply the entire nation's demand for fuel with algal biodiesel on an amount of money that's similar to what we spend anually on importing oil, which is coincidentally about the same amount of money it would cost to install a single hydrogen pump at every gas station in the US.
Wave power is and has always been a crock.
We know it's the future. We know with adequate research spending it can be achieved and will make any talk of green or nuclear power pointless. It can be both done before going to Mars, for comparable price, and will help greatly with achieving that goal. It will eradicate global warming by letting us produce cheap hydrogen. So what are we waiting for?
Wave power is a total ridiculosity - you want to sacrifice TWENTY FOUR PERCENT of US coastline in order to supply SEVEN PERCENT of the electricity.
:)
This is our electricity usage BEFORE we tack on the electricity used to power our hydrogen cars, which will raise our consumption an order of magnitude.
Using algal biodiesel, breeder fission(with development on fusion), and wind where suitable, are the only remotely practical eco-friendly choices that are sustainable - Photovoltaic trumps them all, but to convert even just our current electrical needs to photovoltaic would cost more than we've spent on imported oil since we started importing oil. We could create an infrastructure to supply the entire nation's demand for fuel with algal biodiesel on an amount of money that's similar to what we spend anually on importing oil, which is coincidentally about the same amount of money it would cost to install a single hydrogen pump at every gas station in the US.
Wave power is and has always been a crock as an energy scheme.
whoops, forgot to log in
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
How viable is solar power? I was asking myself this question and here's the numbers I came up with.
In 2001 the USA used 96275 trillion BTUs of energy that year. This comes to 3.22 trillion watts.
Now there are about 295 million people in the US, so this comes to about 11Kw per person at any given time.
This means each person uses is responsible for 262 Kwh of power per day.
Now lets say that square meter of sunlight provides 1 kw of energy on average and the average area gets 5 good hours of sunlight per day. Looking at this chart, you can see that this assumption isn't too far off.
The typical solar panel is about 30% efficient. This means that for every square meter of solar panel would render 1.5 KwH every day.
This means that each man woman and child would need 174 square meters of panel to be responsible for all the energy made and used in their name!
If every person in the united states of America put up solar panels. We would have over 51 billion square meters of panel, that's close to 20,000 square miles of panel or the equivalent of covering most of over in panels.
Now these numbers account for all energy used both domestic, industrial, and exported. Also these numbers do not account for the added or lost efficiency of converting systems over to pure electrical power as opposed to other energy processes like those used in the internal combustion engine.
I left the links to my math in just incase I botched anything.
That even when a totally non-CO2 emitting, non-radioactive power source is found we still get the "OMG!! It's could cause xxx", uproar.
Living here in the post-industrial wonderland of NJ, I find this amusing in a bad way.
The other thing that shocked me was the supposedly "higher" costs for "green" energy. Bad news folks, it's lower than what I pay to Conectiv/Pepco.
And now back to our regular insomnia...
For those who want more, the best links on for intelligent green reading:
WorldChanging.com -- which also has an article about wave power.
TreeHugger, which is already linked in the story.
Dave Pollard, which writes very insightfully about lots of things including environmental philosophy.
Green Car Congress, where you can get the best news about green mobility, cool cars & industrial developments.
IDFuel, which is more about design but covers some of the same ground as TreeHugger.com
FuelCellWorks for all the latest news about fuel cells.
Grist Magazine, for news and a touch of humor, plus lots of interviews.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I'm curious as to what potential impact on the ocean wave power may have. I believe there was a /. story recently about how wind power will actually take the kinetic energy out of wind and affect global weather patterns. Surely taking the kinetic energy from the ocean must have some sort of impact on some sort of ecosystem.
Hopefully it won't have any serious negative impact as this technology seems promising.
The problems with nuclear power are pretty well outlined here, I think. Give it a read, it fills some of the holes left in the the recend Wired article that most here have probably seen.
Nuclear has many advantages, but we must not turn a blind eye to its shortcomings.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
When will people realize that the real problem here is that there are just too many people?
Now I'd like to do the same kind of calculations for the other power sources, but I'm having some trouble making sence of the units.
Wave power is cited as 25kW/m of wave crest length.
Did they mean wave crest hight or the energy density for a given meter of coast?
Tidal power is cited at 5kW/m^2 at a flow rate of 3m/s. I'm not sure what this 3m/s is refering to. It's not the change in the vericle column of water, otherwise we'd have some really killer tides, so what is it?
Waves are cool, but don't forget ... OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion)
My father was a primary designer on this, so I had the "real scoop" on what was going on there in real time, it was real exciting stuff back then!
Mini-OTEC, 1979
In 1979, the first successful at-sea, closed-cycle OTEC operation in the world was conducted aboard the Mini-OTEC, a converted Navy barge operating in waters off Keahole Point.
This plant operated for three months, from August-October 1979, and generated approximately 50 kilowatts of gross power with net power ranging from 10-17 kilowatts.
Its turbine generator produced a gross output of up to 55 kW. About 40 kW were required to pump up 2,700 gallons/min of 42F water from 2200-ft depth through a 24-in diameter polyethylene pipe and an additional 2,700 gallons/min of 79F surface water, leaving a maximum net power output of 15 kW.
This was a joint effort by the State of Hawaii and a private industrial partner.
More linkage: NREL's OTEC site
Google
What's the matter with you people. I need my expensive SUV to drive 20 meters to the store to buy a bag of doughnuts. I don't want none of this pink energy shit. Damn. I want oil.
America invented oil and the doughnut.
Future energy challenges of the United States and the earth in general have a lot more to do with a growing population with more consumption of energy per capita than how we actually generate more energy.
As engineering advances allow us to have more energy, this also allows us to have a higher world population as modern agriculture is highly dependent upon machines (which require energy), pesticides and artificial fertilizers (which require energy to produce) and last but not least transportation (which requires a lot of energy) to get the kind of yields and logistical network to get food from the farms to wherever people happen to be living.
Increasing our ability to generate more energy just creates a bigger problem in that it allows more people to exist on this planet while unchecked by nature's nasty method of population control called starvation.
As long as third world countries can just keep pumping out more and more people and export them to industrialized nations with no real immigration controls (such as the United States), the problem will just get worse and worse.
Get world population under control and you solve most of the short term energy problems the world faces and in the meantime perhaps technology will catch up to the future energy demands of the planet so that humanity can sustain larger populations on the planet. But if you just allow the people of third world countries to breed like crazy and then give all of their people refuge in the wealthier nations, then population growth across the planet will continue to rise exponentially.
treehugger.com. Haw. What Would Cartman Say? ;)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
" Those electrical generators are going to TOTALLY kill those waves I wanted to surf. Oh MAN."
Remember, part of being "green" is doing LITTLE or NO damage to the environment!
But rest easy... the CLOSEST facility is 2.5km (HI) from shore, while the CA facility is 13 to 25km from shore. MOST surf spots are a scant 20 to 100 meters from shore. (As a surfer, this is the very first thing I checked in the document!)
I suspect the effect on "my surf spot" will be negligable. And hopefully this will be a viable form of energy that has negligable impact on the ocean environment.
-EatingPie (aka SurfingPie)
I would like my word salad with no tomatoes and honey mustard dressing.
Do you think a real human posted this? Or is it some kind of script-post?
Aight, I've seen tons of misinformation and bogus speculation here, and I just perused the document!!
(1) The facility is out to sea. Hawaii is the closest at 2.5KM, while California is at 13 to 20 Km.
(2) They are in about 40M of water. Waves break in about 1-4M of water, depending on size.
(3) The things FLOAT on TOP of the water! (The "Pelamis" design does anyway.) They are mored with cable, and are no where near breakers.
(4) They are not so much "wave" energy as "swell" energy (ie waves = coastal, swell = deep ocean).
Huge variation in wave height makes near-shore uneconomical when waves are small (often), and SEVERELY dangerous when large. (Name a man made structure that has withstood BREAKING waves or a sustained period of time.)
Even when waves are small on the coast, deep sea swells still oscillate across the surface unhindered. The point is to harness these oscillations for energy (as far as I can tell).
The environmental impact will be truly negligable, except for moorings and swell energy depleted before it reaches the coastline.
The very environmentally-paranoid surfer in me says... Go for it!
-Pie
I find the claim that this technology provides better energy density than solar problematic if the cited stats are correct.
Sterling solar which is a thermal solar, rather than PV solar, technology. They say that a mere 100ssquare miles of their concentrators would supply the entire electricity needs of the US.
First, there are no CO2 emissions. That's the most important thing. Fossil fuels leave behind CO2 which heats up the planet.
Second, there is no soot and other such trash going to the atmosphere. Third, the amount of radioactive waste is in fact very little compared to the amount of waste produced by other methods.
Yes, the waste is highly toxic. And the acquiring of the uranium leaves waste behind. But even so, nuclear power is cleaner and better than any plant fossil based fuel source (oil, gas).
Even if you are green (I am), get your facts correct and don't think with your emotions in things like these.
What the hell, is it 1910 again?
Aeroplane?
But what about the fact that the energy does have to come from somewhere? Wind power has started to show vast weather changes of those downwind. Since the energy is sucked out of the wind and it changes the way things work downstream. I imagine water would behave the same way. Drastic changes in the currents, and thus the ecosystems. Not only in the immediate vicinity, but probably worldwide, the butterfly effect and such, even if these are few and far between.
Clones are people two.
In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, I can build lots of tidal harnesses, and unlike mining platforms, the tidal harnesses don't reduce the amount of food that can be harvested from an ocean square. Therefore, the harness must not be significantly reducing the number of fish, amount of kelp, etc. That means no significant ecological impact.
The problem isn't that there is too many people. The problem is that there are too many wasteful people. How many lights are left burning 24hrs a day? How many incandescent lights could be replaced by compact fluorescents? How about turning off the escalators in the malls? Are we so lazy we can't walk up a flight of stairs? How many million VCRs, TVs, DVDs, stereos, etc. are trickling power away on standby, just so we can use the remote instead of walking three metres to turn the device on manually? How many computers, monitors, laser printers, etc are left on 24/7? Heck, how much power is wasted by "wall wart" transformers, even when the device they power is turned off?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It's quite silly to dismiss the power of (ahem) alternative power.
For example, the Freedom Tower now under construction in NYC, USA will generate a significant amount of its own power. (as much as 20%!)
I'm a supporter of Nuclear technology, but only if it's open. The current "don't ask, don't tell" nuclear regime is stupid, stupid, stupid, and will never result in an industry that's truly safe. Nuclear technology should, like cryptography, be open, and should only be trusted when it's withstood significant, public, peer review.
Have you ever heard of Changing world technologies and their plans to convert garbage into crude oil? I've been following this one for about 2 years, and I think it's the "real deal". It's still in its infancy, but it's viable in many places now, today!
They're taking their time to refine things, and if I were them, I would, too. When I get the chance to invest in their technology, chances are, I will.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
thats right. We will build a big space sphere round the sun to harness it's energies. It will run on Linux and never crash.
We will all speak Klingon in the future and wear space helmets and eat food pills. Klingon will also be a new programming language of the future. We will use it to feed our cats, who will be half cat and half human.
Good luck improving efficiency over time (ie, for ever!) that keeps up with population expansion.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,209 67,1018934,00.html
"One of six prototype solar dishes installed near Albuquerque by Sandia National Laboratories. The plant will produce up to 150 kilowatts of grid-ready electrical power."
The wave action of a tsunami is hardly noticable until it comes to the nearshore shallows. It is only there where the tsunami becomes a monster. From Wikipedia: Tsunamis act very differently from typical surf swells; they are phenomena which move the entire depth of the ocean (often several kilometres deep) rather than just the surface, so they contain immense energy, propagate at high speeds and can travel great transoceanic distances with little overall energy loss. A tsunami can cause damage thousands of kilometres from its origin, so there may be several hours between its creation and its impact on a coast, arriving long after the seismic wave generated by the originating event arrives. Although the total or overall loss of energy is small, the total energy is spread over a larger and larger circumference as the wave travels, so the energy per linear meter in the wave decreases as the inverse power of the distance from the source. This is the two-dimensional equivalent of the inverse square law in three dimensions. In open water, tsunamis have extremely long periods (the time for the next wave top to pass a point after the previous one), from minutes to hours, and long wavelengths of up to several hundred kilometres (compare to the typical wind-generated swell one sees at a beach, which might be spawned by a faraway storm and rhythmically roll in, one wave after another, with a period of about 10 seconds and a wavelength of 150 m). The actual height of a tsunami wave in open water is often less than one metre. This is often practically unnoticeable to people on ships. The energy of a tsunami passes through the entire water column to the sea bed, unlike surface waves, which typically reach only down to a depth of 10 m or so.
Actually we just like to argue and call the other guy a numbskull. At least I think I read that in the FAQs someplace;)
Put me down for "all of the above", plus zero point vacuum energy and all the other schemes. I even think that has potential, along with atmospheric and ground based "natural" electricity. That's a biggee I never hear talked up and it should be. We are sitting on a huge spinning ball of molten iron that has a huge electromagnetic potential just hanging around mostly untapped, unlooked at, undiscussed. why I do not know. Maybe re-look at that, a la some tesla action.
I'm a "more power" kinda guy. We got new coal techniques that leave the coal underground and use this special bacteria to convert it to methane, easy to extract and pipe away and use in the existing natgas pipelines then. We got your nuclear batteries and somewhat better designed reactors. We got solar and wind (I got me some of that stuff). We got wood and cellulose to ethanol. We got algae that give off hydrogen gas. We got just using more insulation (still the best bang for the buck but not sexy enough to talk about usually). We got your geothermal. We got your biodiesel and making fuel from hemp a couple of ways. heck, for some cargo, they could bring back sailing ships with new dynaimc sailing designs for the long haul. Man, there's tons of solutions out there.
And so on and so forth and yada yada, I can probably rattle off another couple dozen if I think on it some and check a scosh and refresh me memories with google.
The energy solution is to use "all of the above" wherever it fits in the best. There is no one size fits all magic bullet solution. If tidal gennys work, I say throw em out there! We got umpteen millions of naked roofs with shingles rotting away on them, I say throw some solar PV up there, it'll add in. Stick a few megawatt wind gennys on every farms in the midwest, help the farmers out some and they help us out then, they got the land, we need the juice. Throw them tidal gennys off the coasts. Stick the hydropower back in and stop tearing down the old dams. Put the methane digesters in. Whatever. We been tallking about it too long.
The deal is, we can't wait for big money and bigger politics government to do all of it, we have it in our little grubby hands to all be part of producing energy, not just be total consumers and waste all our loot on stoopid toys and just kvetch about it all the time. I say it is every geeks civic duty to be the leader in their neighborhood and at least do something along these lines to get the ball rolling, just like we were the early adopters of computers and got that ball rolling.
You got "all the way" with making some energy personally, "part of the way" and "none of the way" to go with it. That's IT, three choices only that every geek gets to make on that question. "None of the way" is the only guaranteed "you fail it" selection, so everyone has a 2/3rds chance of making a correct decision..
Sure, we need the energy, but do we have to have these things up where they get in the way of the view?
"You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?" -- Steven Wright
"I'm a supporter of Nuclear technology, but only if it's open. The current "don't ask, don't tell" nuclear regime is stupid, stupid, stupid, and will never result in an industry that's truly safe. Nuclear technology should, like cryptography, be open, and should only be trusted when it's withstood significant, public, peer review."
There's three assumptions here.
1-That there is sufficient "public" to care about what needs reviewing to begin with.
2-The the public peers are sufficiently capable to make good reviews.
3-That the very same are NOT available in the non-public form, and are in the "public" form.
Oh, gee this is a hard one. Would that manmade structure be called... a PIER?
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
"I'm sorry, Valentine's Day got to me pretty hard."
His computer dumped him for a sexy PDA.
No, they are causing the moon to orbit the earth slower, and thus farther away. As the orbiting body moves away from its primary the gravitational attraction becomes weaker and, as a consequence, the orbital velocity decreases.
there is also a tidal force that from the sun that will eventually cause the earth to rotate once per year. I'm not sure who this conflict between the moon's and the sun's tidal forces work out.
In the end the earth will rotate once per year and the moon will be so far away from the earth that it will rotate around the earth once a year, too. One would need some more elaborate calculations for this, but my first guess would be that the moon will end at one of the earth's "trojan points", at the same distance from the sun but 60 degrees ahead or behind the earth. You can get some excellent C source code to calculate this here.
Presumably harnessing this energy is affecting the interaction with the earth and the moon or slowing the earth down (I mean the energy has to come from somewhere right? - and I guess it isn't the sun in this case).
:-)
I guess the effect is negiligable, but it kind of bothers me that we might be slowly crashing the moon into the Earth or something (which would be slightly worse than a Nuclear accident
Does anyone no where the energy actually comes from for tidal power?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
People will start doing it when energy prices start going up. No one will do it for $20/year, unless either 1) they are so poor that $20/year means something for them, or 2) they are aware of the hidden environmental costs and care about such things.
IMHO, the best way would be to put all the costs in the final price. Make people pay for the true cost of energy and you'll see people worry about conservation.
They are convinced that nuclear power is unsafe, that radiation will kill us all, and they are playing a NIMBY game with nuclear waste disposal
You forgot to leave your address so we can send all the safe nuclear waste to your backyard - I'm assuming that the reference to "Not In My Back Yard" was an invitation to dump it in yours?
There is one alternative that is fully sustainable and has been working economically for decades. Brazil has been producing ethanol powered cars for 25 years. Every gas station in Brazil sells straight ethanol at a lower price than gasoline. Although the proportion is lower now, in the 1980's about 90% of the cars in Brazil were powered by straight ethanol, and the rest used a 75%/25% mix of gasoline and ethanol. Today several models of cars in Brazil come with "flex power" motors, which can burn any proportion of ethanol/gasoline mix.
The Brazilian alcohol program is the largest renewable energy program for cars in the world. The only reason why it has been pulled back a little is because the oil prices aren't as high now as in 1980, after you take inflation into account. Also, the whole country has a much better economical situation, with a lower debt, internal oil production is higher and world sugar prices are higher (Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar cane). All these factors have contributed to decrease the proportion of ethanol in the total fuel consumption in Brazil, but ethanol is the first and most viable alternative for renewable transportation fuel in the world.
I just wanted to know, when you all switch to the solar panels, what are you all going to do in the winter? I am used to winters with plenty of snow, it is not like that everywhere of-course, but if there is snow (and dust by the way) aren't you going to lose most of your power?
You can't handle the truth.
Why? Just make a huge circular (or some shape dictated by local streams and wind/wave pattern) concrete-wall "tub" on a shallow part of continental shelf and exploit the differences in water level that occur between the tub and sea. Using ferrocement (naval concrete, used to make ship hulls) and reinforcing columns for construction should do just fine.
This isn't the first discussion I see on Slashdot about "how can we get more energy"? :-)
But why no one ever talks about "how can we be more efficient? How can we save more energy?"
And please don't start that "needed for our american lifestyle" mantra. The USA spends WAY WAY more energy per capita than any other country in the world. Even countries where the lifestyle is not bad at all!
After all, being more efficient may be interesting and geeky engineering problem as well
I say forget the whole Hydrogen idea! My vote goes to electric power for most anything but autonomous systems. And for them, bio fuels made from biomass grown intensively in hydroponic facilities with assistance of electric power for ilumination, pumping CO2-enriched air into water and for maintainance.
We'll have to catch atmospheric CO2 anyway, so why don't we use the same facilities for both energy storage AND carbon catching (I guess we can carbonize biomass for storage instead of fermenting it into fuel)?
it will start invading other countries for the use of their coastlines.
america: you're a bunch of cunts.
Love,
The rest of the world.
For fall efficiency, direct sunlight is vital. However, there is plenty of energy that can be obtained on a bright but cloudy day. Yes, for electricity it may be a problem but not for heat. Believe it or not, solar power has been used for heating even in the UK, let alone Germany.
See my journal, I write things there
Now find out the total roof space in the USA. The figure should pleasantly surprise you. - this is your quote from the comment above mine. Well, if you take the total roof space in the USA into account (and I do not know what it is by the way) I am sure a lot of that space would be located in the places with plenty of snowfall in the winters, cloudy climates in the summer, plenty of dust at other times. In such conditions the common sense thing would be not to encourage an infrastructure that depends on the power of Sun so heavily at all. The common sense thing to do would be building many nuclear power plants and yes, I want one in my back yard and I have one by the way - Pickering Nuclear Power Plant (I live in Toronto, Canada.)
Sure, the common electrical grid design would allow California and Florida and Texas etc to put power into the system but I would expect most of the time those places would still have to buy power from other places that generate constant power, especially at night.
You can't handle the truth.
Then perhaps you should look the figure up before blundering onwards.
The common sense thing would be to produce solar power somewhere sunny, as I have already suggested. I don't understand why you insist on locating solar panels where they would obviously not work. Use your common sense.
Then you are foolish. Nuclear power is even more expensive than solar power, and solar power is more expensive than wind power. Every nuclear power plant ever built was heavily subsidised by the federal government. Without subsidisation it is not cost effective.
Some major flaws in your statements.
First item, You're comparing RAW HEAT energy consumption verses the nearly 100% usable electrical output of solar panels. Thermodynamics dictates that you'll never be able to convert more than 40% of that heat energy into electricity.
For example, Gas engines waste 80 to 90% BTU fuel content, Coal burning power stations 60%, Nukes waste 70%, and that's not even counting transmission losses. So you can start out by dividing the RAW factor by at least 4.
Second item, not all energy need be in electrical form. It makes no sense to convert sun-light into electricity just to heat water. Hot water solar panels can do this function quite nicely with average efficiencies exceeding 50%. Similarly, passive solar heating designs, (windows), can go a long way towards displacing fossil fuels used to heat homes.
No need to pave over vast stretches of land, plus you save on distribution costs.
What's also not mentioned is how much energy goes into mining, refining, and transporting all that energy.
I'll bet that we could mount solar panels on just a fraction of our combined roof area and end up supplying most of our energy needs.
As an avid fisherman, I'm pretty excited about this. Any structure offshore (floating or submerged) will hold bait, which will help support larger sea life.
On the other hand, they would double as tsunami detectors.
Play Command HQ online
There are numerous sources of alternate energy that could replace environmentally harmful sources of energy within decades.
The problem is not scarcity of alternatives but that the true cost of harmful sources is not factored into the price paid by consumers (nor charged by suppliers). This is the only reason alternative sources are more expensive. True cost would include the cost to undo the damage caused by using it. What is the cost to reverse global warming? What is the cost to reverse damage caused by coal mining (leached acids and heavy metals into the groundwater + acid rain)?
Intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom
I was one of the web developers for these two Canadian green energy sites.
canwea.ca
skygeneration.ca
Both of which are hosted by a green web host, appropriately called thegreenwebhost.ca
Meh.
Everybody saying that the nuclear power is the way to go, with only a few exceptions, is not mentioning the waste. What WILL we do with all that delicious fresh radioactive waste? Pile it up out back? Sure nuclear might be 'safe', and perhaps it is efficeint, and perhaps also 'green' in that it doesn't pollute the AIR, but the waste is a pretty big problem that needs to be addressed. Billy
For one I don't understand why so many people are for wind turbines. On top of taking up an immense amount of space and disrupting the area they are in, they also slaughter bird populations. A somewhat recent slashdot article also talked about research on how altering wind streams could affect the climate (particularly in Europe).
Coal is so horrible and filthy I don't even need to mention it. Solar is a wonderful concept and doesn't disrupt the environment in any way comparable to other sources, but I would wait for higher conversion efficiencies before implementing anything (which should happen soon).
Until then nuclear power is the way to go. Once we work through the politics involved they're are many technologies that have yet to be fully realized. Breeder reactors would supply the world's power at least long enough until fusion power is technologically feasible.
The Bay of Fundy already makes use of tidal power generation. It is in a limited form at the moment but there have been attempts to expand the operation.
Yeah, pesky humans.
I'm not sure I put much stock in technology from the people who came up with the technology to turn fireworks into firearms. The fact that some of those humans also turned scientific calculators into game/porn machines isn't too hope-inspiring either.
It is hard to put sarcastic inflection into plain text.
There are some execellent comments under "want more on the subject?" but what do they have to do with wave powered generation? Those comments I will be bookmarking because I do want to make my own watts and I don't want to be owned by NSTAR or help piss away fossil fuel into the sky. ... 25% of the available wave power were used at 50% efficiency..." it would equal all current hydro electric. Well maybe...but what does that mean? does that mean lining 1/4 of our nations coast line with a flotilla of generators? That would be uglier shit than all the dams and coal-fired powerplants combined! Yes, its "green" but only if they paint all those thousands of miles/acres of wave harnessing generators with green paint. Not gonna fly! You'll get your juice this way a lot sooner.
But on the topic...TFA says is if
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Damn - first our jobs go offshore, now our wave power feasibility demonstration projects go offshore too. Is nothing sacred?
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Energy use dropped in the 1980s after high cost and laws made people conserve. Then these savings went away as people started buying unregulated trucks (SUVs) and 4000 square foot mini-mansions.
" On a separate note, in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's $1.2B 2006 budget the Department of Energy is closing out the Hydropower Technologies Program.
How much have we spent on Iraq and the Middle east? Something like over 100Billion for the Iraq war alone. Perhaps if more money was spent on Renewable engergy R&D we wouldn't be so dependent on foreign resources. I wonder if anyone has done a feasibility study regarding the timescales and money needed to reduce our foreign energy consumption from unstable regions to less than 10%. Even if oil is still cheaper there has to be a point at which the cost of oil isn't worth the trouble of doing business in unstable regions.
That Wave energy is more reliable - and reliable means a lot when you're competing with dispatchable power such as coal - which can be operated and amortized on a 95% utilization schedule. If your wind is only 30% available, and down in the summer when you need it most, you will need back-up generators to make it through the year. That's redundancy - as in twice the cost - twice the pollution etc ...
Backup power can pollute more than baseload power (See single cycle vs. combined cycle) and as a result, unreliable green energy may result in dirtier air - this is no a concern in Denmark, which has the highest percentage of Wind - but the dirtiest power scheme of its peers. (France by contrast is mostly nuclear.)
AIK
You are leaving out the fact that Uranium is preprocessed.
In the Myth of clean Nuclear the article points to dirty coal plants used to process fuel for "clean nuclear".
The net pollution of our nuclear industry is substantial.
AIK
So, what are the long term effects of sapping 50% of wave energy? How does that affect mixing of the upper waters and the movement of nutrients? Will the fish be scared away to their doom? Will goop pile up at the mouths of rivers? Will warm and cold spots get warmer resp. colder?
I really would like to believe that the answers to these questions are good. But let's not screw up again, please. Design, *then* build. We may only have a few monumental mistakes left in our account.
The common thread in most green power schemes is "efficiency doesn't matter because the energy is free..." Unfortunately, efficiency does matter because you have to pay for and maintain the equipment that captures the "free energy." The startup costs are high as are the ongoing expenses and in Otec's case, it didn't pencil out as a viable solution.
Hawaii ended up selling the cold seawater to aqua-culture firms that could sell farm grown abalone and lobster to the Japanese. The cold seawater is perfect for those folks and the profit margin on abalone, lobster and nori is much higher than it is on kilowatts.
It's amazing the so many assuptions are made about green energy, which often has a hidden problem. With tide energy, we are taking energy away from the moon. So we speed up the rate at which we'll loose the moon. Nice going brainiac!
Every country at some point exhausts its hydropower potential. Germany has for years. We have exploited most of our easy targets, and its pretty clear we don't intend on flooding the grand canyon to generate a few GWatts.
Whatever is left is probably micro-hydro, and that's not really experimental science.
The DOE needs to let industry take reasonable risks, and focus on the high risk projects - such as wave - which industry cannot afford.
AIK
Some of the nicer things about sapping the waves is it will reduce coastal erosion, which is a big enough problem to consider passive wave breaks.
Sure it will affect the sedimentary budget - we don't know exactly how, but some wave devices can be moved around periodically to address these concerns.
The beach absorbs the wave energy, and most fish don't hang out in the surf zone of sandy beaches. There is some live on rocky surf zones, but gentle waves would likely be adequate to maintain the species.
AIK
I've been working in the wave energy industry for a decade now and it is becoming more viable. One of the biggest problems, sadly, is regulatory uncertainty over permitting requirements and gamesmanship between various agencies. Thus, many US wave developers need to spend precious resources on compliance with regulation rather than refining the technology. To make matters wosre, many of these prototype projects are extremely benign - a couple of small buoys and a tiny footprint. Of course, larger developments might have more impacts, but you can't get to that stage unless you can get a prototype into the water.
Most experts believe that right now, wave is where wind power was 15 years ago. Now, wind is fairly pervasive, though admittedly, it does need to begin to wean itself off the production tax credit and other such subsidies. For more information on recent wave developments and barriers to commercialization, visit www.renewablesoffshore.blogspot.com
Carolyn Elefant www.his.com/israel/loce
Compared to Wind - Wave energy will be low impact. Some designs are subsurface.
Most of the energy is focused on the surface of the wave. In any case, the devices will be mostly submerged, and probably not visible from shore.
Compare that to offshore wind, and i think you'll agree Wave energy is a visual bargain - especially since you get 10 times more power per square meter, and the square is lying flat!
AIK
Having lived in Eastern Europe and in Egypt with a very low energy per capita - no car etc... I wholly agree.
It has to do with sharing the fire. Years ago, when we spent energy - we gathered around - now we indulge in isolated consumption - one person per car, two people in a 2000 square foot heated house, one TV per eyeball, (In Egypt the Television is in the local teahouse - and the neighbors gather 'round to watch. Not only is this more fuel effecient - it is SOCIAL, and lowers the incidence of depression.
Isolated consuption is not only unhealthy because of the impact on the environmnet - it is ANTISOCIAL and a menace to health for that reason as well.
The Key is sharing - the problem might be taxation of shared consumption.
For example, a restaraunt may be more effecient way to cook food because it can warm the oven once and then cook at full effeciency - but the taxation of restaraunts means it is "cheaper" to cook at home.
The same is true of washing the dishes - the more expensive dishwasher might keep a chamber warm for drying, might recycle the wash water, might use a thermal exchange on the rinse water to recapture the heat - but we can't share consumption if we are taxed more for shared consumption than for isolated consumption.
AIK
As a surfer - you belong to the endagered class.
Wave energy will be focused on the best surf sites (under one assumption which is high energy is best - this might be replaced with constant, timely energy is best, but that is unclear)
In any case - less waves means less surfing, not sure this can be avoided. The nice thing is that surfers will have dedicated places where the sport is preserved, and the wave forecast will be damnably accurate - so these will be hoping joints.
AIK
harnessing 24% of available wave energy near the US at 50% efficiency is equal to all of the hydropower currently generated in the US (~7% of total electricity production).
Holy 1.21 jiggawatts, Batman! 24% of available wave energy "near" the US... How many miles of coastline are there in the USA? How many miles is 24% of that?
Walter Cronkite says he's for it as long as it doesn't disturb the view from Martha's Vineyard. Please put it where it will only get in the way of poor people.
-Styopa
Just for reference, you might try to avoid Wired as a source of information. It's a lot of fun, and that's why I read it too, but it's not really a source of knowledge. Wired's "hit rate" (predicted technologies that actually come to fruition) is pretty damn near zero.
I read that article, and I'd love to see it happen. But I'm not holding my breath just because I read it in Wired.
The Tsunami caused a 3' wave at sea. Storm generated swells are much bigger at sea.
The Tsunami was not a big wave by any means. But it caused a rise in sea level that flooded over the islands.
Think "flash flood" rather than "big wave" and you have the more accurate picture.
-Pie
Many a promising ocean power generation scheme has succumbed to the corrosive effects of sea water. I hope they have carefully considered this.
Say we invent a fusion energy system.
Now say the Sudan, Libya, N Korea, Iran, Kyrgistan, Chechnia, and a few other peace-loving states say they would sure love to help save the environment - what do we do?
Send them a fully operational fusion reactor, some plutonium, and say have fun with this?
Nuclear anything is a pretty bad solution to sustaining life.
The Negative externalities of Frances nuclear program include N Koreas Nukes - which was imported under the nonproliferation agreement (ie we won't use it for weapons - WE PROMISESSES)
if we spent half the money we have spent on nuclear, fusion, and wars - on peaceful green energy like solar, wind, wave, tidal, geotherm - we would have sustainable - peaceful energy in the world today.
AIK
A big reason it got expensive is that nuclear power has to be thousands of times more safe than other power production, due to the widespread fear of anything "nuclear". At comparable security levels, nuclear power is cheaper than pretty much anything.
Most fascinating to me is that the extreme security measures are then taken as a sign of how dangerous the technology is, and used to spread more fear. It's the perfect circular argument.
You mean Watts, not watts.
Watts are named after a person, so you should capitalize appropriately.
cutting pollution in half and reducing our energy needs substantially ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They're talking about extracting up to 25% of the available wave energy along the entire coastline. Now, I'm no marine biologist, but I'm fairly sure that the ecosystems of coastal areas (both beaches and continental shelfs) are heavily dependent on wave and tidal action. The impacts of reducing the incoming energy by 25% along the entire coastline probably can't be predicted. Needless to say they would probably not be positive effects.
I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to refer to this as "green" energy, in that sense.
The only really green energy I can think of is nuclear.
doesn't this destroy the areas where animals might live? sounds like the great idea of wind farms where thousands of birds are destroyed each year here in CA
America needs more power. Americans are overweight. How about installing small generators on all of the exercise bikes and treadmills in the health clubs across the country? We could improve the physical condition of the population while helping to contribute to the nation's energy supply. Dave ;)
Pelamis was mentioned back in April last year, including a link to OceanPD. All in a post about three quarters of the way down the comments. I only mentioned it originally because a mate is a mech eng on the project. Btw, it does seem like a pretty cool plan, I saw a model running in a tank a few years ago, and the progress has been amazingly quick.
So, as the man said, nothing to see/sea here.
The Annapolis Tidal Generating Station, oldest operating station in North America. Fundy has the highest tides in the world.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Fission power is a white elephant due to the solid waste polution: spent fuel rods and contaminated containment materials.
The power answer is solar radiant heat powered stirling engines. They are efficient, quiet, safe, cheap and 100% polution free in operation and they don't have the nasty polution that the manufacture of solar panels does.
Why does anyone still support fission power?
* Cost effective.
Nuclear has been competing with traditional electric generation for decades. We know we can generate nuclear power at a relatively low cost.
This is a bunch of BS. We, the public, don't know a damned thing about the true cost -- nor does anyone in the nuclear industry, or government for that matter. The true cost of nuclear power is unable to be determined, because it's so enmeshed with secret weopons programs and other government slush.
Nuclear power does not, and cannot exist without heavy government subsidy. The question is how much, and whether this money would be better spent elsewhere -- solar cell research, improving grid technology and moving toward distributed power, etc. The problem is we'll never know. Unfortunately, many people in government and industry like it this way.
PVs are expensive if you are going to try to cover big areas, which is why australia are building a Solar Tower in the desert:
f /0/A7BD712D34AE25B3CA256B12001BA833?open
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/eddesk.ns
And for information, the total solar power falling on just a section of Australia's desert could power the whole worlds electric needs..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
The Vectoring of Nuclear Weapons through "peaceful nuclear energy" is pretty damn well established.
The Nuclear nonproliferation treaty in in essence a trading agreement between nations so they can export nuclear technologies with an agreement that they won't be used for the one thing they are best at - WMD's
N. Korea promised no weapons in exchange for access top nuclear tech. It violated the agreement. Certainly Nuclear technology was imported - by the French seems most likely pakistan USSR are other sources - doesn't really matter where - the point is the only reason to have a nuclear energy program is the WMD angle.
I'm not suggesting we have an oil dependant future - but a nuclear dependant future seems more like a jump from the pan to the fire.
how about peacefull green energy?
AIK
You were the only ones that lived within a mile of it. I know 5 coal plants in the middle of 2.5
million people, they are the largest points of
pollution. The wind farms are out in the
boonies, so fewer people are impacted.
You forgot solar radiant heat stirling engines. They are efficient, cheap, safe, 100% polution free and simple to manufacture.
Why can't I get one these for my house?
Until it reaches maturity, though, U.S. readers can pay for other forms of green energy. Green Energy as in "Green Berets?" Shouldn't that rather be beige energy, then?
The high cost of energy from wind turbines is the main factor that slows down deployment. It is high because of two reasons
- very high maintenance cost. This cost is expected to decrease to an acceptable level though, and the ratio of turbines that are 'down' will improve at the same time.
- you need expensive overcapacity of conventional sources, to fill in when the wind doesn't blow. You have to build the same capacity (well probably less) with flexible generators that can easily stop and start. So not nuclear. When the wind blows too hard you have excess energy for which you often don't get a good price.
but as for their environmental effect I'd say, bad for birds, good for fish.
One thing about solar energy: making solar cells is like making computer chips: generally highly polluting. That may change...
Also, I thought that the biggest advantage of AC was the ability to deliver electricity over longer power lines without so much signal loss, since a rectifier turns it easily into DC. But as far as I know, transforming the voltage works well with both AC and DC. Ironically, those same characteristics that allow AC to be propagated over such long distance without huge energy loss are also responsible for the lethality of AC.
And yeah, 24% of our coastline is a huge area. But, to be fair, they did say "available wave energy," and many places are ill-suited to that use, so maybe they're only talking about locations with big differences between high and low tide.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
It was outrageous that California should have an energy crunch - with the huge coastline, large wind supply, ample hydropower, and endless sunshine, California should be powering every state west of the Mississippi.
What ever happened to Bill Clinton's Million Rooftop program?
Maybe the profile is different, the way they can tell a nuke from an earthquake.
Play Command HQ online
The heater and/or air conditioner along with the water heater are by far the biggest users of electricity. The electric company that I work for has some residental load that in the late summer, average on-peak demand is about 600 MW and the spring average on-peak demand is about 275 MW. This demand increase is not because people watch more TV in the summer.
European countries have more of a dependence on Nuclear power than the US, see power statistics.
Throughout the world, most people are uneducated about nuclear power and do not consider it green at all. In fact, nuclear power is much cleaner and cheaper than coal. Wind and hydro power are both less environmental friendly and more expensive. See this government waste article for details. Also, you can't put wind, hydro, and tidal generator in as many places as nuclear. But, people fear what they don't understand making electric companies like the one I work for less likely build nuclear power plants because of the bad feelings people get about nuclear power.
This is electricity generation capacity (note, not actual usage!) of the USA. Sure, conservation will cut back on consumption, but it is a far cry from asking a household to (e.g.) use compact fluorescent bulbs, to telling a factory owner to cut back production. Yes, I know, efficiency, but even if you manage to cut energy consumption by 1/3, you still need... 667 gigawatts of capacity? How many wind turbines, solar panels, tide generators is that? How do you get power from the coast to Chicago? What do you do when it's dark and the wind's not blowing?
I wholeheartedly agree with the parent: the best solution for the near term is to replace coal, oil, natural gas generating capacity (totaling roughyl 800 gigawatts) with PROVEN, EXISTING modern nuclear designs, such as CANDU-6 (1800 x 600MW units should do it). The health savings from eliminating air pollution and environmental savings from eliminating acid rain forming NOx and SOx or strip mining 1 billion tons of coal annually will far offset the hypothetical risk of radiation release, the cost savings of constant fuel price and even reduced foreign oil dependency from reduced diesel fuel consumption (yes, takes a lot of diesel to run the trains that move all that coal around).
It's a short-term (50 year) solution while we develop something better, and clearly beats what we're doing now, and any relatively inefficient, so-called "green" alternatives.
I just think that we need to consider the WMD risk and its link to "peaceful nuclear plants"
Others have said on this thread that nuclear is cost justified - only if you share the capital costs with weaponization goals.
AIK
Um, I've mentioned the waste any number of times.
What WILL we do with all that delicious fresh radioactive waste? Pile it up out back?
Basically, yes. that's the best thing to do with fresh nuclear waste. You leave it on site until the radioactivity levels drop a bit. It's not like arsenic, it'll become less dangerous with time.
Nuclear Proponent's waste management:
1. Reduction: Newer plant designs are simpler, safer, and more fuel efficient.
2. Reuse: There are plant designs that can use current nuclear waste as fuel with minimal #3
3. Reprocess: Something like only 5% of the potential fuel is used in convential US reactors. After the waste has cooled down a bit, it's possible to reprocess the waste into more fuel. Waiting 40 or so years makes it substantially easier on the equipment.
4. Disposal: If you follow the first 3 steps, the remaining waste (reduced by a factor of 20-100!)is much more highly radioactive than what is currently being held in pools at power stations. This is actually a good thing, because the average halflife is months-years, not centuries. This means that if you keep 20 years of fuel (1 railcar is the average per year per power station right now, so it'd be 1 railcar's worth per 20 years) onsite, by the time you're looking to bury it in a yucca mountain it's down to something like 1% or less of it's original radioactivity. Also, it degrades much faster, so you only need a shelter that'll last centuries rather than eons.
Sure the waste needs to be addressed. But we can handle it now. We just need to work through some of the politics, as only for nuclear power is reprocessing, recycling, and reuse BAD.
I don't read AC A human right
I think the Altamont wind generators are beautiful.
I'd say the most likely reason we don't sink 'em is that they'd become very difficult to maintain. They also would not be able to spin anywhere near as fast under the water.
-Pie
Okay, so we need to make the waves smaller to slow erosion?
But we have no measured values on how much these things will effect wave size.
And more importantly, you ignore the effect of bottom contouring, energy focus (ie swell direction), and wave behaviour.
As stated previously, these pontoons are 20KM out in the ocean, and they are smaller and have less effect than an island. If you look at the CDIP swell maps for southern California, that San Clemente Island has little or no effect on coastal wave height... The waves WRAP AROUND the islands because they behave like... well waves.
So we can argue all we want about coastal erosion and diminished wave size. But a 3KM wave farm out to sea at 20KM is probably not going to have a huge effect. The waves that miss the farm will simply wrap around and hit the coastline at full force anyway. And this is ONLY when the swell is directed at the coast through the wave farm in the first place. Swells come from many varying directions.
All this to make one simple point... We have no idea what the effect will be.
-Pie
As a surfer, I know quite a bit about the ocean, so this obviously sparked my interest. As such, I've read the majority of posts, and I've been able to make a simple conclusion about this whole thing...
We have no idea what we're talking about -- we have no idea what these "wave farms" will actually do to the environment!
Most people are just spouting uneducated opinion, and are for the most part completely clueless. Sure most responses look intelligent and well thought out, and they pretty much are. But because we don't know the subject at hand -- and think we do -- puts us one step above throwing darts blindfolded.
Didn't learn much about waves here. Learned a LOT about slashdot.
-Pie
People in physics and engineering do not use terms such as "kilowatts per hour" or "horsepower per hour". That's like saying "gallons per minute per hour" - a rate of change, and all but useless. You measure energy delivery in KILOWATT-HOURS (kilowatts TIMES hours, 1 KWH = 3.6 million joules), HORSEPOWER-HOURS, et cetera. You don't divide power by time unless you are getting really esoteric, so if the urge strikes you to put a slash in the expression you are almost certainly wrong.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Flamebait? Fucking morons. Try arguing the point, I have data to back me up, you clearly don't or you'd at least counter.
11*43+456^2
WaveBlanket is an inflated mattress which lies on the surface in a long band several miles off the shoreline.
Most of the World could be powered by Waves - but it would require a substantial percentage of the coast to be tapped - particularly in the waning waves of summer. In the winter - we have planty of power, but demand is lower.
The effect of bottom focusing isn't very important if you wrap the entire landmass with a WaveBlanket.
You're right as long as Wave energy is dibble-dabble 20KM at a time, there will be no effect - not on the air or the sea, but if we're serious - we can arrest our carbon emissions - at the cost (or benefit) or reducing coastal erosion.
AIK