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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."
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
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.
It certainly seems to be a limited problem. The question, then, is whether or not you can find a safe alternative, or if you define an 'accepted' loss and work to stay within that realm.
In California (which also has a 20% by 2010 law), these wind turbines are going up ALL OVER - especially in a lot of the passes leading from the coastal valleys into the inner valleys. Some of the windier passes happen to be the same passes that birds use for migration, which is causing a lot of the complaints. Not all of the passes are on migration routes - the corridor along I-10 through Palm Springs has one of the largest installations, and hasn't been subject to many complaints at all, as the number of birds (population density, I suppose) in that area isn't nearly as high as in the coastal regions.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
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
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.
Do some actual reading about engineering and nuclear physics instead of making nonsensical statements about controlled bomb-blasts.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
The "grass growing green" means nothing in particular, just a "saying," however, it should also be noted that grass also grows on land-fills too. How liveable is that?
Besides, Just because humans can't live there without getting cancer doesn't mean that other life forms aren't able to is a piss-poor arguement. I don't see many animals hanging-out in any of those pictures. Did you read the rest of the site, where the "tourist" describes how quiet it is there? As in, not even birds chirping?
You have one hell of a way of making your point... umm... I think... ???
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.
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...)