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Scotland Building Wave Power Farms
eldavojohn writes "Scottish engineers are taking advantage of the huge ocean coast that Scotland enjoys by building a 'wave farm' to harvest electricity from the ocean's powerful waves. These big red tubes have been named the Pelamis System after a sea snake. Max Carcas, the business developer for the firm, says it is 'a bit like a ship at anchor or a flag on a flagpole, it self orientates into the waves ... Waves then travel down the length of the machine and in doing so each of the sections, each of these train carriages, moves up and down and side to side.' These snake-like movements push hydraulic fluid through generators to produce electricity."
May the Maths Be with you!
Hidden from view is not necessarily a good thing, it is part of what has allowed us all to overconsume energy.
I like wind turbines primarily because they are such an eyesore. If every watt of electricity anyone used had to be generated by a wind turbine it would raise the consciousness of everyone about the real costs of all this energy usage. Bury these wave farms at the bottom of the sea and we'll all go back to opening our windows with the air conditioning running and every TV in the house left on....all while the whole family is out idling in the drive thru of a wave powered McDonalds that somehow magically spirited its ground beef all the way to Nebraska from a recently cleared rainforest in Brazil.
We can apply all the technological band aids we want to this problem and do no good. The problem is our culture. We need to make the results that culture as immediately apparrent to as many people as possible if we want a long term fix.
Who the hell modded this as flamebait? Sounds like a perfectly reasonable question. Moderation these days...
Meta, Meta, Meta
Oh this will NEVER work, it won't even put a DENT in the countries energy needs, it's all a POINTLESS endeavor.
You'll just have to keep buying foreign oil.
Funny, that is the exact same argument that liberals use when talking about ANWR. Fact is, any energy added to the grid is a good thing, as long as it produces more energy than what you put into it!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is an example of patents effectively stifling innovation which would benefit everyone.
> And as long as all externalities are paid for by the people causing them. Which rules out the ANWR, doesn't it?
You're right - it would most effect Alaskans, particularly the Inuit. Odd how most Alaskans, and north coast Inuit seem to be in favor of ANWR drilling. Oh, well. Let's just import more mid-east oil.
[Insert pithy quote here]
There's no consistency to the wind, either, but it can be adapted. I would imagine that every joint has a piston pump that provides varying spurts of pressure/volume. These could force hydraulic fluid into an accumulator (basically, a pressure tank that is partially filled with a nitrogen gas bladder so that you can "compress" the fluid and keep it under pressure). Inline with the accumulator is a regulator that feeds into a hydraulic motor/turbine, which turns the generator at a relatively constant speed. On land, the generator output is likely converted to DC, then inverted back to AC (solid state) to keep the phase and voltage in synch with the grid.
Another proof that patents and copyrigths are the enemy of humanity(but very profitable for the elite few).
Odd how Alaskans, who all profit off of oil, would be in favor of something that would give them a bigger government check. Strange how externalities like destruction of habitat impact everyone, not just those living nearby.
We are drilling in Prudhoe bay, about 50 miles from ANWR. Is there a "destruction of habitat" there? Nope. The wildlife is actually doing better there. Besides, who's habitat is it if not the Alaskans? Would like Eskimos telling your state where it can build roads or structures?
Weird how little oil there actually is in the ANWR.
It's estimated that we will be able to pump as much out of ANWR as we are importing from Saudi Arabia for 30 years. Some say it's only about 3% of us annual oil use, but that's still a LOT of friggin oil!
Bizarre how the only possible alternative to drilling in a wildlife refuge is importing foreign oil.
Well, if we are not drillining ANWR, it's either import it or not use it. While everyone agrees that we should eliminate our need for fossil fuels altogether, that's still a long way off. Hopefully, 30 years should cover it.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Is there any evidence that the companies that hold the patents on this held the patents to prevent others from using them? I would be very interested to know this. If it is true, I think it is important to expose. If it is false, then this is a troll-ish statement just to upset the Slashdot anti-patent crowd.
I hope you realizate how difficult it may be to justificate the use of orientate.
"I'm just waiting for some environmental group to start whining about these, too."
Sure there are plenty of NIMBY's, but they come from all walks of life and politics not just the environmental fringe, for example do you want to live within earshot of a windfarm or do you want it hidden from view by the ocean's horizon?
"They complain that windmills kill too many birds."
Here in Australia the last group to "complain that windmills kill too many birds" was the conservative federal government who put a halt to a windfarm in my (coal rich) state because of a rare parrot. The (ex) fedral enviroment minister responsible for the decision was unashamedly in the pocket of the coal industry that is busy chewing up the bulk of our "green energy research" subsidies looking for the "clean coal" magic bullet. The windfarm project is now back on track but the procrastination was deliberate political posturing that had nothing to do with parrots or the environment.
Also just because these things don't spew CO2 does not mean that they won't have a some unforseen consequences, large structures can change currents and the shoreline, you might end up inadvertantly filling a shipping channel with sand or washing away sand dunes that hold wetlands in place. The envionmental impact of any large infrastructure should be studied and assesed to reduce the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot.
I for one would certainly not like to see them dotting the coast of the Whitsunday islands, shark bay, the Shetland isles, or any other fragile breeding ground for fish and wildlife. I would also like to see these things up and running but the TCO (including the environmental costs) needs to be proven on something other than paper before we make them ubiquitous.
Do you see the connection with the parrots - they were used as a scapegoat to trivialise environmental concerns, just as you are using them as a scapegoat for why the uptake of this tech has been so arduosly slow.
""Honestly, I think it's a good idea, on par with offshore windmills and such, but I think that it's only a matter of time before some group starts a resistance movement for some idiotic and quite negligible reason."
There is an effective "resistant movement" in the form of the fossil fuel industry that has been successfull in stagnating these projects for many decades (although it's effacacy here in Oz has diminished dramatically over the past 2-3 years). Wind and water power ideas have been politically pushed by "environmental groups" since the club of rome, if not before. You say yourself they are a "good idea" but then claim that "enviromental groups" will hamper the progress of such projects with trivial complaints. After decades of pushing for these project (against many trivial objections) why the hell would they do that?
This bashing of environmentalists is patently false doublespeak. So what exactly do you find so objectionable about the concept of people organising in groups with the aim of preserving the environment, and is it so far fetched to think of the people who are financing this project as an "environmental group"? My guess is that you have thought about power generation but haven't done much thinking about the society and enviroment around you, you have simply sucked up some propoganda about "environmental groups" that for some reason you thought was worth repeating.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What has allowed us all to overconsume energy is that we are insulated from the real costs and impacts of doing so. We don't care about what blows out of the smokestack if it (mostly) goes elsewhere- for us, those costs are externalized (until we pay our health insurance premiums). We buy gasoline (in the US) that is taxpayer-subsidized, which insulates us from feeling the price pain that would otherwise motivate us to either conserve or switch to an energy source that mitigates these costs.
What makes excessive consumption bad is not that it is excessive; it is that there's a consequence of doing so that is undesirable. Get rid of the undesirable consequences and where's the sin? I don't think there's a value in eyesores; they a) don't really make us conserve, and b) are themselves one of the undesirable consequences we'd all rather be without. In essence, they're a solution that comes with a different set of problems, just like the ones we're trying to solve today.
Cost makes us conserve- pretty much every other factor is secondary. Concern about the environment makes us conserve, when cost doesn't override that concern. We'll tolerate mercury in our food so we can have cheap coal-fired electricity, and government deficits so we can subsidize gas prices. We'll for SURE tolerate eyesores, no sweat. (especially since they'll end up being placed in less-desirable locations- again, a function of cost externalization). In other words, there's virtually zero redeeming value in having your power come from an eyesore, simply because that won't incentivize the sort of low-to-no-negative-impact living you seem to really be interested in.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
See, that's what I don't get: what's so ugly about a wind farm? Now, I've never actually seen one in person, but they look pretty nice in the pictures...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?