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."

Comments

Wave hello

[FidelCatsro]

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.

Re:Wave hello

[FidelCatsro]

Actualy in germany in 2004 it was roughly 9.4% of the power consumed was garnerd from wind power
http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?link id=39367
Its not a conspiracy theory its a fact of the matter , It will be replaced eventualy but right now too many jobs and natural resource earnings would be at stake for countrys to consider ditching it right now

Conglomorates its the right word though (A corporation made up of a number of different companies that operate in diversified fields.) most of them do have stakes in several sectors ,if you look into the various fields companys such as shell , BP and Texaco operate ..

Re:Wave hello

[FidelCatsro]

To back that up a little , I lived most of my life in Aberdeen Scotland which is the Oil captiol of Europe, a hell of alot of jobs around the region are intertwined with the oil rigging industry and the other sectors of the oil field.
If Aberdeen were to lose those jobs instantly it would be a massive blow and the same for many other areas and regions throught the world , we can't simply just switch from oil and natural fosil fuels , it needs to be slowly introduced to build up the new industrys or we could be see wide spread global reccesions for a number of years , as oil brings in a hell of alot of money

Re:Wave hello

[doktoromni]

Comparing the energy contained in known Uranium reserves to the energy contained in the known oil reserves is much like comparing a matchstick to a forest fire. Fissile materials could last for *billions* of years [www-formal.stanford.edu], and so fissiles should also be considered a renewable energy source as the sun - and this is taking into account an yearly energy consumption rate 25 times higher than present, more than if the whole world was as energy-hungry as the developed countries.

More details and animation

[oren]

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". :-)

Re:More details and animation

[Rakshasa Taisab]

There's one problem with your calculation, it assumes the cost of mass produced units is the same as the prototypes.

How it works

[dos_dude]

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.

Re:renewable energy sources

[ProfaneBaby]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-win dmills-usat_x.htm

After years of study but little progress reducing bird kills, environmentalists have sued to force turbine owners to take tough corrective measures. The companies, at risk of federal prosecution, say they see the need to protect birds. "Once we finally realized that this issue was really serious, that we had to solve it to move forward, we got religion," says George Hardie, president of G3 Energy.

The size of the annual body count -- conservatively put at 4,700 birds -- is unique to this sprawling, 50-square-mile site in the Diablo Mountains between San Francisco and the agricultural Central Valley because it spans an international migratory bird route regulated by the federal government. The low mountains are home to the world's highest density of nesting golden eagles.

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.