Slashdot Mirror
Underwater Ocean Currents Used to Power Bermuda
Saevio writes to tell us The Royal Gazette is reporting that Bermuda is planning to sink a power generator off the coast to take advantage of ocean currents. The company providing the service, Belco predicts that they will be able to provide approximately 10 percent of the island's energy needs. From the article: "The 150ft long deep sea generator with a four-blade turbine inside would cut Belco's dependency on oil and also benefit the environment by cutting future fuel emissions, he added, stating that the company needed to increase its generating capacity before 2010. Mr. Madeiros, who hailed the technology 'mind-boggling', said: 'This is cutting edge technology, not used anywhere else. One can't help but get excited by this technology.'"
It would be very quick to assume that interrupting current flow would be a definite consideration, but your talking about billions of tonnes of water moving at a very strong flow. There is just TOO much energy involved to worry about whether a turbine will stop ocean currents. Turbines are also passive, allowing water to pass through them. The amount of energy they remove is negligible compared to what is needed to make the water move past it.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Perhaps "Underwater currents TO BE used..." would make a better headline. It's four years before they deploy it. Save the past tense headlines for when I can ask questions like "Does it work?" and "Are there any unintended side effects?" and "Would it scale?"
For crying out loud, why is it every time there's a story about wind power, or ocean thermal power, or any other non-polluting technology, we always get somebody with NO concept of SCALE popping up with this same asinine question?
Because people are dumb. One turbine in the ocean is, literally, a fart in a hurricane.
On the other hand, don't blindly assume humans won't overbuild something. Do you think the first internal combustion engine spurred thoughts of smog-filled valleys hundreds of miles long? No, because it would take tens of millions of combustion engines running non-stop to do such a thing.
This is why the U.S. does so poorly in math and science... people actually think that a 150' turbine could have ANY impact on something as massive as ocean currents. They have no concept of the scale and just how massive the oceans are. .... these are the people that think if we all drive our cars east at the same time, we can alter the earth's rotation and make the day longer.
Hell.. the 8 propellors on a single U.S. Aircraft Carrier probably have a bigger effect on ocean currents than this turbine would... heh...
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
The impact of one (or even a lot) of generators is much less than the impact of changing salinity in North Atlantic seawater due to the arctic and Greenland ice melting. THAT will eventually reach a tipping point and break the Gulf Stream circulation.
Keep in mind that it's the water pushing the blades, not the blades pushing the water...this is not like a ship screw.
Under steady-state conditions, a neutrally bouyant object will be pushed, by the current, through the whole turbine without ever touching it. The same water that is moving the objects is pushing the turbine blades out of the way.
It's an interesting conjecture, but probably more or less akin to the idea that windmills may change weather patterns.
Except for solar energy, the energy in this planet is somewhat of a closed system. The trade-off: Possibly affecting an ocean current may well be much better than the effects of smog, mining.
I won't pretend to know nearly enough about such things, but just considering the volume of water moving in the ocean, I believe it would take an incredible number of turbines like this to measurably affect any ocean current.
As far as the fish are concerned, you are correct, a current-driven turbine poses little danger to them, unless it somehow messes with the temperature or causes some sort of pollution. (something I actually know about for a change)
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
"On the other hand, don't blindly assume humans won't overbuild something. Do you think the first internal combustion engine spurred thoughts of smog-filled valleys hundreds of miles long? No, because it would take tens of millions of combustion engines running non-stop to do such a thing."
Yep that is the key. It really is all a matter of scale. How much will be too much. Right now I wouldn't worry. What we need to do is see if it is practical. If so then we need to figure how much we can extract without causing damage.
As one person said, "The solution to pollution is dilution". A little bit here energy taken from here and moved to their will not really matter much.
It is exactly like the wind power issue. One windmill isn't going to hurt anything. What happens when you start extracting mega watts out of the wind pattern? What about changes to the micro climate just down wind from the wind farm?
I worry more when people dismiss things like that without looking at them at all because it would be too small to matter. Sort of like the idea that foam that you can crumble in your hand could shatter a carbon-carbon leading edge tile. I mean the foam when it hits that hard material will just shatter doing no harm right?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Keep in mind that the current flows out of the gulf and around the tip of Florida. Right at that point is probably some of the strongest currents. If Florida was smart, they would sink a few of these off the keys. But it will probably take a change in the current Florida admin. before that will be allowed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Bermuda is a pretty damned small place (20.75 sq miles according to their website). I don't think they have a trmendous amount of land area to go putting up wind farms on.
Now, if they could get their wind turbines floating out to sea (I'm sure this was posted on Slashdot a few weeks back), they might have better luck with wind and they wouldn't have to give any of their very scarce land area.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One turbine in the ocean is, literally, a fart in a hurricane.
I think not! An ocean turbine is literally an mechanical device, while the ocean is literally a body of water.
Turbines are not now - nor have they ever been - farts. And while a hurricane is also mostly water, an ocean is not one.
Literally is not another word for figuratively; it's the opposite.
Literally.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
That said, perhaps we can come up with a more environmentally sound solution - how 'bout using the energy stored in the nuclei of very heavy metals (U, PL)? No? Okay, then let's just burn some nice fossil fuels (coal, petroleum). No again? Maybe we should just dam the course of a river and impound a few million gallons of fresh water? No? Still causing environmental change, you say?
Look just by (breathing, farting, pissing . . . living) we have an effect on the environment and the ecosystem. This looks like a decent way of minimizing that impact while preserving the lifestyle which modern technology has afforded us. It isn't perfect? It's a work in progress at this point - get over it!