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Wave Powered Generator to Power Homes
Eh-Wire writes "A Scottish company, Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) and it's Norwegian backer, Norsk hydro are set install three wave powered generators 3.5 miles off the north coast of Portugal for the Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis. This will be the world's first commercial wave powered generating system. Providing the initial three generators perform as expected, an additional thirty wave powered generators will be installed by the end of 2006. It's estimated the wave powered generator farm will displace 6000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted from conventional electrical generating plants."
... a similar system was in place, however the locals misinterpreted it and put it in the middle of a football field.
Anonymous Coward
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/354882 0.stm ive read a few other reports on the matter, At the current rate of progression it was noted that we would only have 10% of the power from renewable energy by 2020, However i have read a few reports that were speculating that wave generators set up around Scotland could provide 20-25% of Europes power needs. ,. .
If this is so , then it would definantly be a great source of commerce for the region.
Not to mention the positive effect on the enviroment
Yet this will be stiffeld at every turn by the conglomerats who make a fair bit out of natural resource based fuels
In the region of Germany i am currently , i belive a large percentage of the enegry is derived from wind power(a commen sight when driving around here are collections of wind turbines) , If other countrys were to take on schemes such as these we could cut emmison levels by massive ammounts.
This wont hapen though , as oil(coal gas etc) is money and money is power , so untill the well drys up there will be little done about it , bar experiments.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.
i did not know that fact, thought it was 8%-10%, but it's a good goal, although i doubt it will be reached. there is lot of opposition to 'conventional' methods of renewable energy, like wind energy.
here in holland (a windy place) people think they're ugly, noisy and potentionally dangerous. and the same environmental groups that dislikes carbondioxide and nuclear energy als dislike the fact birds may fly into those things. for long time, people have suggested off-shore solutions, like off-shore windmill parks.. but they're expensive.
so, i find it aprticulair interesting that a country like portughal pioneers in those steps, instead of 'hi-tec' countries like holland, germany or france.
guess it's just a matter of oil prices to raise more, so alternative power sources automatically gets economical benefits. after all, the techniques are there, short-view economics and lack of vision is keeping those from being implemented.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Then we had steam, and burned fossil fuels to make it. Tearing up the ground, polluting the air, the water, and eventually damaging our whole world.
Finally we return to extracting energy from water. No compaints from me on that score.
In theory, powered generated from the farm could displace up to 6000 tons of carbon dioxide. Predicting this is a guaranteed result is deceptive and frankly fraudulent. They haven't even finished the initial experimental deployment. Plus there's no mention of the environmental impact at the ocean site it will be deployed.
The parent, or the fact that parent was modded informative.
Are available at the company's site. Flash animation of how the system works can be found here.
:-)
From their site:
A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh.
And:
The 750kw full-scale prototype is 120m long and 3.5m in diameter...
So this isn't very different from the power density of, say, wind turbines. It has the advantage that you can locate the 40,000 12m long 3.5m diameter devices - not to mention X00,000 anchoring cables - out of sight in the ocean, instead on the top of ridges where they stick out like sore thumbs and chop the occasional bird migration.
Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way. With that amount, people will start complaining. Also, their site gives no estimation of cost per kw. A salt ocean with high waves is a very machine-hostile environment, so these devices will have a very finite life time, and at the sizes they give, they are anything but cheap.
So while this is very clever, and nice, it doesn't get us off the hook for a sustainable energy source. Floating nuclear plants, now - that's a thought. Its the ultimate in "not in my back yard".
A little more detail about how that stuff works wouldn't have hurt in that story.
Ocean Power Delivery Limited has a website! And they have a nice little Flash animation that explains those sausages.
...as nuclear power (Really, nuke power is amazing and we should all be using it). But at least it will be hard to offend anybody with this technology.
Actually nevermind, I'm sure someone will say "Fish get caught in generator", and start a movement.
It's estimated the wave powered generator farm will displace 6000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted from conventional electrical generating plants.
And how many thousnands of tons of carbon dioxide were emitted by the factories producing this generator equipment, and the generating plants powering them?
I wonder if large machinery is really the answer to renewable and enviromentally friendly power. Personally, I don't think its likely.
Might be an interesting alternative to tidal power, when tides are not strong enough. But I couldn't find much technical information on it.
As for tidal power itself, maybe it's worth noting here that it has been in use for quite some time, even though at only few places. The largest is the 240 Megawatts plant in La Rance in France.
In Northern Ameria, there is The Annapolis Tidal Generating Station.
anything one does to extract energy affects the environment. wind farms and nuclear plants change local micro-climates. i'm curious as to what, if any modeling has been done for 'sausage' farms.
as an aside, these things are certain to confuse and confound first time extra-solar visitors.
EU is proceeding, along with Japan, with a test bed for materials to be used in nuclear fusion reactor, if they ever sort out where it's gonna go. In the mean time, IMO, the best thing that could happen for 'clean' power would be a global standard fission plant along with a set of standards for site requirements. Cookie cutter fission plants would make nuclear power much more affordable. As for nuclear waste, IMO it's pretty arrogant to think we'll be around 50k years from now, while at the same time not being clever enough to figure out how to handle the waste by the time the 50k year countdown ends...
They are always waving. The Queens waves are a bit feeble though, dunno if I would want her powering the electric shower in the morning.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Come on that is hardly flamebait , its a joke about the "Mexican wave" .A tradition at football(soccer) matches where fans start to raise their hands then the person sitting next to them follows suit and so on till it goes round the entire arena
We need look no further than The Netherlands for why some environmentalists think birds will get killed in wind turbines. It is a widely known an accepted fact that millions of birds every year are killed in all those dutch windmills which exist only to prop up the local postcard industry. In fact, 'Holland' is dutch for 'bird mincer'.
*cough* (if others are allowed to spout uninformed crap on emotive issues, I see no reason why I shouldn't join in the fun)
J
You can have free flowing or dammed tidal. The one in France is dammed iirc, however http://bluenergy.com/ uses free flowing.
In response to some other posters, tidal power probably won't do much to fish. The turbines spin much more slowly than wind turbines because water is much denser than air. This means that little fish can just swim through, while larger fish just go around them (if there is no dam)
Oh sorry, it's a little early. I was thinking "wow, electric prices sure must be high to resort to pouring wine into a generator!"
Wave powered, eh... if I crank up my stereo will that generate power and make a perpetual motion machine?
Oh really? So, I guess the grass is growing really green over at Chernobyl these days, heh? Where the hell did you pull this out of? Actually, don't answer that... I don't want to know.
Lets be clear about something: yes, nuclear power is most likely the energy source for the future. Do not forget however, the thousands of radioactive waste pools that are sitting about the world waiting for someone's backyard. Also, using Chernobyl as a "yeah, well, Chernobyl, ya know..." type of segue is plain-stupid for any pro-nuclear arguement. Chernobyl is a perfect example of an "accident," and accidents do happen. Yes, there were large factors involved like the "big test" and "stressed-out" plant managers, but they though they had it all under control. So, accidents do happen. Knowing that, how big do you want to let the accidents be? Nuclear? I'll stick with the current advances in hyrdogren cells and things to that nature. Controlled bomb-blasts just frighten me a little too much. For all you science-techies who are going to correct that: take a look at the Chernobyl plant pictures... looks like a bomb went off to me.
I've heard to capture wind energy.
Who's your user, program?
Back to wave power - this unit may not generate as much electricity as three mile island, but it's a small cheap solution. There is no one true energy, anyone that tells you there is is trying to sell you something.
It's its, you illiterate fuckos (the submitter and the editor(s)).
For your information 'fuckos' is not a word, you illiterate reader.
Anonymous Coward
"If Nuclear power had not been stiffeld by protestors"
That is true if a bit UK centric , several uk Nuclear research projects which were long into the development of methods for reprocesing nuclear waste so it would be useable again were closed down due to the parliment caving in to protestors.
Ah, well now, here you have broken one of the key rules of /.
In order to be a grammar Nazi, you have to either deliver a long and carefully written piece of prose detailing how and why the editors makde a mistake, and providing helpful tips for anyone else who is confused, or be horribly sarcastic b'y makin'g t'he mis'take aga'in and aga'in.
Calling them fuckos just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.
That reminds me; why is tidal power not more widely used? Building islands is expensive but if the long term results are positive, why not?
Swedes are doing something similar. I saw a coverage on the news about 3 weeks ago.
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I don't live in the UK, but that sounds like a different Thatcher to how she appeared in the international press.
I wonder if large machinery is really the answer to renewable and enviromentally friendly power. Personally, I don't think its likely.
What are we supposed to use, magic? Virtually everything modern humans do is based on machinery, often large machinery. You want solar power? Big arrays, manufactured in large factories. Some resource consumption and pollution is inevitable in implementing ANY "green" power scheme. It's just a matter of determining if you're reducing the overall environmental effects or not. Alternately, we all go back to living in teepees.
Freedom: "I won't!"
What axe do you have to grind? calling predictions fraudulent, just because they are predictions.
And well, what about the environmental impact of these things that lie at the bottom of the sea? Even if it were to have a negative impact, who are you to weigh that aaginst the positive impact from polluting energy that was replaced?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Domestic cats kill millions of birds annually. Windows kill many thousands of birds who fly into them. Animal-loving environmentalists often keep cats, and live in dwellings with windows, so they can gaze out at their beloved nature. Homes without windows would be more energy-efficient. Perhaps we can harness cats for energy, but they sleep 16 hours a day.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Fragment (consider revising).
fuckos? did you mean:
damn I wish I hadn't spent all my mod points!
good post!
A falling raindrops kinetic energy is converted by small tuned(impedence matching) targets which drive piezo generators. My daughter built a prototype and measured efficiency for comparison to actual energy in the falling drops, as a science fair project.
One of the questions not addressed...On a large scale, what sort of environmental impact might such a scheme incur?
Bareback.
My son, my son.
I remeber Three mile Island and Chernobal ( the second being at LOT worse ). I am also old enough to remeber the atmospheric tests in the Pacific, duck and cover and the sinking of the "Rainbow warrior" by french commandos. Yes nuclear power has seen vast strides in saftey to a point where a green icon broke a taboo and is now openely advocating its use. These developments are very recent in the scheme of things. Not so long ago the FUD you speak of was real, I don't think it has had a chance to sink in yet that things may have changed. On such a short time-scale I don't think you can really blame Joe Sixbongs for being twitchy about things that glow in the dark.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This had me checking the calendar to see if it was the 1st of April, and then a map to confirm my suspicions (and check that nothing had changed drastically since the last time I looked).
I believe I'm correct in stating that Portugal doesn't actually have a North coast.
The article seems fond of giving out meaningless information. It says the plants will displace 6000 tons of carbon dioxide. Is that 6000 per day, per year, or per the liftime of the plants? It also says that the cost will be $10.2 for 2.25 megawatts. Again we have to ask over what time frame that $10.2 million is being charged.
It's probably a little too hard for Reuters to get a lot of science competent journalists, but they should at least have editors to check this sort of thing.
Oh dear, this has to be stopped! Don't you people realize what will happen if we start drawing energy from the tides? At the very least, it will destroy the resonance that exists with the moon's orbit, change the length of the day, and mess up everyone's calendar. Worst case scenario, it will bring the moon down upon us, damn well messing up the environment. Great idea folks, but I'll stick with my nuclear power plants, thank you.
Displacing dirty production methods with clean ones is great, and I applaud the companies and individuals involved with this. However we also need to concentrate on using less energy in the first place. The most realistic way to do this is to increase the efficiency of the products which consume electricity or require them to use less power when they are standing by. This can best be done by publically funded research, pollution taxes, and the removal of incentives for dirty power production.
People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly ,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.
I read somewhere that more people die in coal mines in russia every year than the total death toll (including long term cancer deaths) from chernobyl. And chernobyl was a crappy design that would not be allowed in the US. Cancer death estimates vary considerably, however. Additional eurasian cancer deaths would have to be compared to polution related deaths from power plants (which kills thousands every year). Directly attributable deaths for nuclear power, per terawatt years of power generated are 8 for nuclear power, 85 for natural gas, 342 for coal, and 883 for hydroelectric (dam's break). Add some cancer deaths for nuclear and pollution related deaths from fossil fuels. And add global warming related deaths to fossil fuels. Commercial power plants have 11000 reactor years of operation in over 30 countries with two major accidents. That is about one accident per 100 power plants over the projected life of the reactor and future accidents are likely to resemble three mile island rather than chernobyl. And coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants (yep, coal contains radioactive material).
Average radiation exposure to 2 million people around three mile island was 1mrem compared to 6mrem for a set of chest xrays. Exposure at the plant boundary was 100mrem which is less than the annual background exposure. So, even if you were standing near the plant, your total lifetime radiation exposure was increased by about 1.2%.
Studies indicate that US Nuclear reactors will survive a direct hit from a 767.
Nuclear waste disposal is an issue. Integral Fast Reactors have the potential to reduce the magnitude of this problem considerably.
About a year ago, James Lovelock, of Gaia fame, proposed nuclear power as the only alternative that could stem global warming in time
There is one new technology that is more suited for oil replacement and could be a decent alternative to nuclear as a fossil fuel replacement: Thermal Depolymerization . That is a new technology but a pilot plant is producing 400 barrels of oil per day. When run off of plant (or even animal) material, the net greenhouse emissions are zero and the process consumes waste (and a wider variety of waste than other technologies) rather than creating it.
I live about 30 miles from two nuclear power plants (and the site of what might be the first new power plant built in the US) and less than half a mile from a research reactor.
Freudian slip? Any product ought to create *wage* energy.
I thought Geo-thermal was supposed to have great potential as a non polluting energy source, but now I never hear a thing about it. What gives? Was it so good the thought police erased it? Was it too expensive and impractical? Anyone know?
San Francisco Photographers
Not the web kind? The real ocean kind, like Gidget.
How are the Portugese long boarders going to hang ten, dude, if the wave energy is used to make electricity? I'd rather have brown sunsets from the power plants than give up some good waves!
It's obvious nobody wants to chop wild birds up with fans and building a wind farm on a migration route was probably what nobody intended. Wind farms like this are new on a large sacle so things are going to go wrong and people will find fault where they look for it.
The greens, the govt and energy companies need to come to more scientific and socially acceptable compromises such as the the one in TFA. The fact is if we keep up the status-quo of burning fossil fuels until the birds start dropping out of the trees, it will be too late, we can't just get out of the coal mine to fresh air. Wind/wave farms, modular nukes, solar, whatever, if we don't try this stuff out with a view towards mitigating our effect on the environment then civilization and perhaps all of humanity will end up face down in it's own excrement.
OTOH: We can't just stop burning fossil fuels tommorow, civilization would collapse overnight and many of us would freeze to death in the first winter, on the up-side humanity would probably survive.
I don't know about anywhere else, but the electric companies here in Melbourne (Australia not Florida) will sell you "green power" at a slight premium. A lot of people think it's a scam but the govt says they have to honour thier bargain (they have wind farms but who can read the accounting gibberish?). I think the idea of mandating X% "green power" by year Y and then "let the market sort it out" is a much better idea, it is far simpler to judge progress/compliance and has more likelyhood of social acceptance. What we really need at the moment is a diversity of possible solutions on a large scale and a willingness to compromise on the ecological, social and financial sides of the argument.
Changing opinions on climate change: I have been reading climate change articles on slashdot for about 6yrs, over this time I have seen an extremley polarised argument about the existance of "global warming" morph into an argument about the variations in the predicted impacts of "climate change". I would dare to say that today most slashdotters basically agree with the scientific establishment's view that "something ain't right" with the climate. Posts about volcanoes, (invitation to +funny whores), and other such crap have almost dissapeared from the comments because people quickly learn to have standard debunking refrences for the main psuedo-sciencetific arguments. This must be what they mean by "stuff that matters".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I keep hearing this argument, but I won't believe it unless people put up figures to show it. Yes, there is a energy cost to produce solar/wind/wave power devices; however, if the devices are durable enough, they recoup their energy cost.
And why hemp? What about alcohol from corn? Yes, it has lower energy costs per unit than oil/diesel, but it's renewable.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
You said "People seem to prefer irrational fear to logic."
That's just downright rude. You may not agree but you have no cause to be insulting.
You're obviously missing a key point to this debate.
Killing 1400 raptors is not the same as killing 1400 sparrows. There are literally millions of 'common' birds living within a few miles of my home but no more than a hand-full of raptors.
Raptor populations are miniscule in comparison to 'common' bird populations.
That kill rate is VERY HIGH relative to the population.
That's a great way to kill off the species.
I've always wanted to know where the energy comes from for this? The moon? There's no free energy right?, are we ever so slightly pulling the moon towards us or away from us?
What are the physics behind this?
This company has built wavepower generators before. One unit they built was designed for ten years operational life in the North Atlantic. The prototype lasted six months in sheltered inshore waters off the coast of Scotland before it broke up in a storm.
Large fixed man-made structures in open seas either need to be incredibly massive or constantly maintained at great expense -- the canonical example is oil rigs. OPD hope these new wavepower units off Portugal can be plonked down and only require expensive servicing occasionally. Given their track record I'm not so sure.
Some links on Wave Energy
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/wave.htm
http://www.wavegen.co.uk/
http://www.technorati.com/tag/wave+power
Yeah, can you beleive getting information on this stuff is as easy as googling it?
Georgia
From someone who remebers both as an adult, 3MI was about what could have happened, Chyrnobol was about what did happen. Society became susspicious about nuclear saftey and for good reasons decided not to keep pursuing it on a large scale. Things have changed in experimental nuclear power stations but this does not mean peoples fears about it are irrational, in fact the fear of all things nuclear is largely based on past emprical data. With respect to nuclear power I think it is kinda "nonsensical" to simply brush off Chernobyl as "primitive" and expect people to belive "it will work this time".
In slashdot terms the industry nuked its own karma.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We just need to wire everyone on the planet together and give them all those little gyroscope watches. The combined power generated by everyone moving around would surely supply the earth's power needs. Well except for the US where we are all too lazy to move around enough.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
These pods are a little under 500 feet long. That means they will be selective for some period of waves energy, with a peak in the 13-14 second wave period band (see wavelength chart at http://www.blakestah.com/surf/oldprediction.html). It will also have limited response at fundamentals - longer wavelengths - because these sausages are linked.
There's a problem in this. First of all, the little crappy windchop that surfers hate is in the short period bands, 5-8 seconds or so. And these pods will not suck off any of that energy - the chop will go right on through. Whereas the surfable energy - the long period stuff, will be knocked down substantially. Not good. Also, the bulk of the ocean's wave energy is in this chop. So they are throwing out the baby to drink the bathwater.
They need to redesign it to not have any selectivity for periods over 10 seconds - or wavelengths over 100 meters. Take the bulk of the energy, sap it out, and make the oceans smooth and glassy while the long period waves cruise on through and generate stoke for surfers worldwide.
The pod design is really cool. There are a few things they could do to gear it up also - like load the bulk of the weight and volume at the links to maximize leverage, and broaden the aspect ratio closer to 0.5...I'm envisioning links 10m long and 5m wide with never more than 5 connected serially. That saps the oceans of the wind chop, while leaving the longer period surf (which is more rare anyway) alone. Smaller, easier to deploy (and replace) units, which a physical design using more leverage. And surfing would actually benefit from such a change.
Most power stations just burn the stuff. Not very efficient or particularly clean.
If you put a gasification stage in though, you can produce power and saleable chemical byproducts. In addition, the gas can power a much smaller scale CCGT which can be closer to the consumption, this makes district heating, district cooling feasible and efficiencies reach nearly 90% rather than 40%.
Deleted
It does still have to be dug up from somewhere. Seems to me you are replacing one external fuel source with another external fuel source.
Will you be invading Canada or Australia in the future then? Maybe Kazakhstan.
Deleted
You just burn them, like any fuel source. ;-)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
3 waveplants cost $10M; 30 generate 20MW; a home needs an average maximum 5KW: that's $25K:home. How much do biodiesel plants and farms cost per watt?
--
make install -not war
Wind power is a technological fix for a political problem... So is wave power
George Monbiot in this article writes:
For "wind" read "wave" and you've got it.
Some fixes may be worth doing... but they are still fixes.
EPRI released a series of reports on economics of ocean wave energy conversion recently. The lifetime average cost of electriciy using Pelamis devices ranged from 9 - 10 cents/kwh in good US sites (but in Maine, 32 c/kwh since the waves suck). That includes millions of dollars in maintenance, overhauls, full-time ship & crew to service them (so it's a realistic number). Here is the final summary report, where you can read it yourself:
R eport_RB_01-14-05.pdf
r ogram=270686&value=05T084.0&objid=297213
t ml [oceanPD]
:-( ) so surfers will still have waves.
r gy/tidalenergy.htm
http://www.epri.com/attachments/297213_009_Final_
[EPRI]
You can read more detailed reports from a listing here, which provides more specific info about each site studied in the US:
http://www.epri.com/targetWhitePaperContent.asp?p
Pelamis has been designed & optimized for years, and works in a wide range of wave climates:
http://www.oceanpd.com/Pelamis/Powermatrixgraph.h
Available wave energy increases with wave period and the square of height and you can see Pelamis stops extracting more energy above 750 kw. Also Pelamis can not convert more than 50% of wave energy available at its best (did my own study at my university, no online references
Tidal barrage is too costly for initial capital and has an enourmous environmental impact. However, tidal current generators, much like "submerged wind turbines" will have a smaller environmental "footprint" and a more modular design:
http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/energy/tidalene
(I'm a graduate student studying wave energy conversion. I hope these links provide some interesting reading...)
I can't quite remember when it was (but I know it was at least several months ago now), I remember seeing on tv that the wave-generated electricity was originally thought of and designed by a young caucasian university student who had entered his invention and won the last National Science Competition (or something like that...), he had won a grant to further research and develop his proof-of-concept. I specify caucasian strictly because I wonder how on earth it got to portugal from his hands. I hope for his sake and his future scientific career that his idea wasn't stolen, I mean heck, the guy was in his early 20s!
how is babby formed?
At first, this seems like something from nothing, but before we go down this route, has anyone studied the possible environmetal effects of generating power from waves? Taking energy away from waves must have some effect on the climate if done on a large enough scale (the same might be said for wind power). I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it's not without potential downsides.
why the editors makde a mistake
Ah, meta-irony, how I love thee.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
The demand for electricity is high. You can find more ways of providing electricity, or you can get people to demand less of it. Which do you suppose is more likely, given that the virtually unbroken pattern of human development has tended toward higher technology and appears to be speeding up?
Growth is valuable. It requires energy. Rather than try to halt growth, newer methods of finding energy should be found. And if these new methods happen to be cleaner than older ones? We'll call that an intangible benefit.
...but is it art?
I don't think people's apprehension of nuclear power is nonsensical, only the parent's comparison of power stations to bombs, which is pure apples and oranges, as any nuclear physicist will tell you.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Denmark trades electricity with Norway, Sweden, and Finland on a regular basis (selling wind when it blows, buying hydro from Scandinavia when it doesn't); this means wind energy provides about 2% of _total_ consumption for that region (rather than 30% for just Denmark). Quick population reference for the region:
c na-g05.gif
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/environment/c
Now check out this image to get an idea of the proliferation of wind turbines in Denmark:
http://www.opet.dk/windsector/wind-intro.html
This grid setup does demonstrate that wind + hydro have a special synergy that can be used for grid integration -- an issue almost as important as extracting rewnewable energy itself.
In the region of Germany i am currently , i belive a large percentage of the enegry is derived from wind power(a commen sight when driving around here are collections of wind turbines),
If I recall right I read recently that Germany was shooting for 12% of it's power needs to be supplied by wind genies by 2010, with other EU countries a little behind this. I can see Iceland leading the world's hydrogen economy, what with their aboundant geothermal power.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It's a good thing some countries have got managable renewable energy schemes, they'll be the one's who'll manage to scrape through the oil crisis, unlike the U.S.
Actualy it's not so much the whole of the US as it is the federal government, especially under Bush/Cheney. Many states are working on their own schemes. There's CA governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushing for a hydrogen economy, Florida is working on solar power, then there's Minneasota working on wind power. Many other states are working on their own plans as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Another alternative is hemp. If they planted kansas in hemp, we would get an enormous amount of diesel fuel and only about 5% of hemp varieties are really narcotic (just trace amounts of THC in the other 95%) Unfortunately, it's currently unpopular because of the drug issue.
Hemp, probably the most industrially useful plant, was at one tyme grown in many states of the USA. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. Thomas Jefferson who wrote the DOI and grew hemp or cannabis on his farm once wrote there should be a law requiring farmers to grow it, however he couldn't bring himself to propose such a law because he knew it'd be denying farmers their rights. However in the 1930s many wealthy and powerful industrialists perceived it as a danger to their power and wealth so they pushed to make it illegal. Amoung them was Rockefeller of Standard Oil, Rothschild of Shell, and DuPont of DuPont, all of whom relied on petroleum. It was William Randolph Hearst, the CA newspaper magnate who publized the "killer weed" or "Reefer Madness" drug aspect of hemp. His Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), and other newspaper, paper, and timber companies stood to loose billions of dollars. Hearst owned thousands of acres of forest it logged to manufacture paper yet a new process of making paper from hemp was more efficient than making paper from trees. A report was issued by the USDA, US Department of Agriculture, showed one acre of hemp could produce as much paper pulp as more than 4 acres of forest could in a 20 year period.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yes nuclear power has seen vast strides in saftey to a point where a green icon broke a taboo and is now openely advocating its use.
One of the stories recently was what one environmentalist had to say about this:
Environmental Heresies: Let's Go Nuclear
FalconShould there be a Law?
The environmental movement has done a good job at requiring so many frivolous regulations that nuclear power in the US cannot be financially feasible, leading to increased pollution and disease due to other production methods.
Nucler power has never been commercially feasible and not because of environmental regulations in the US. The only reason nuclear power plants have been built at all is because government has erected barriers to shield nuclear power plants from lawsuits. If they had to operate in a free market, with no government shields or guaranties, they wouldn't be built.
FalconShould there be a Law?
http://www.energetech.com.au/index.htm?http://www. energetech.com.au/content/port.html
This deployment by Energetech is well ahead of the OPD deployment, it is expected to be completed in the next few months. Power from it will be purchased by Integral Energy. This power will be feed back into the grid to supply "usefull energy" to about 500 homes in Port Kembla, Wollongong, Australia. Also in addition to power generation it will produce about 2000L of fresh water per day.
Wavegen, a company based in Inverness, Scotland, built a commercial waver power plant on an island off the coast of Scotland in 2000. As of 2003, it was still in operation.
a y.htm
The plant works on the "oscilating water column" concept. This BBC news story from 2000 explains how it works.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1032148.stm
Here are additional links.
http://www.wavegen.co.uk/what_we_offer_limpet_isl
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2666853.stm
and it's Norwegian backer
"its".
Note to mods: Please mod this up to "+5 Informative" so that Eh-Wire will see it.
But then again, the 2000 tons of CO2 is all relative. Over how big of a time period would these 2000 tons be produced? During 2006? 2006-2026? 2006-2027+?
/. went down for a year?
Question: How much less CO2 would be released into the air if
Gee, that sounds TOUGH. However, what if you first used an artificial means (super-heated generator-powered conduit) to add more heat energy into that water as it was shot into an engine as steam energy ("flash steam")? http://www.newpath4.com/paget6.htm . Dude, the answers aren't as far away as people have been brainwashed to believe (and accept, and pay for), and the answer does not involve killing birds. In our pell mell rush for extravagant, costly, waste-producing answers, the answers that work are being overlooked. The world deserves answers. Many are to be found on http://www.newpath4.com/ and, more specifically, this page: http://www.newpath4.com/NNINDEX/nnindex.htm . When we plug the Niagra flow of U.S. TAX DOLLARS over to OPEC, we will have money for health insurance here. All these issues are interconnected, like dominoes: http://tinyurl.com/bevf9 . Have a Great Day. I am. Woodrow Riley May 22, 2005
Probably confusing wave-powered with tide-powered, but the Usine marémotrice de la Rance was inaugurated by De Gaulle in november of 1966 !
Someone care to explain the difference ?
There is some talk of using vegetable oil in modified diesel engines.
I also heard that the origional purpose of the deisel engine was to burn corn oil.
Has anyone else heard of that?
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
In the past, PV panel production did use ALOT of power, but that has changed. The current tech PV panel produces the amount of energy it took to create it in about 3 years. Most panels are warranted for 25+ years, and will last much longer. This link from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has the numbers...
_ solar_north_america/STAGING/local_assets/downloads _pdfs/pq/pv_faq_energy_payback_2004_en.pdf
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/solar/bp