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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."
If you think this idea is new, it is not. The patents for this technology go all the way back to the 1970s.[1] [2]
As was noted in the original discussion on this topic, Which explains why you'll see this more and more in the news. Some of the countries in Europe have energy generation from wind & waves up to 10% or 15% but 2010 is getting closer and closer.
Everyone recognizes that it's not smart to put all your eggs in one basket and right now a lot of countries are pretty dependent on oil. With a possible energy crisis or global warming problem, wave power looks like it will be one of the many solutions that each country will develop to mitigate their problems.
My work here is dung.
We just had a environmentalist come to our school to talk about alternate energy sources (this is in the UK), and according to him, these systems will only produce one megawatt of power per unit*, comparable to wind turbines. While there is a lot more space in the water to be taken up by power-generators than on land, I've got to wonder how much energy has gone into producing, designing, and deploying this system. With such a low output per unit, is it even worthwhile? * Again, this is not coming from a really reputable source, just some environmental campaigner. Anyone know any real statistics for these type of systems?
games journalism blog
Scientists have been doing research on this off the coast of Oregon as well.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p02s02-usgn.ht
In Portugal. From TFA:
Scottish engineers will soon deploy an offshore "wave farm" in Portugal.
They have also signed a deal to build an even larger farm in Scottish waters.
Construction of the wave farm in Portugal has been underway for the past year in a busy shipyard in the Portuguese coastal town of Peniche.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I've got to wonder how much energy has gone into producing, designing, and deploying this system.
That is an interesting factoid, but irrelevant to the decision of whether or not to deploy. The R&D is a "sunk cost", the money/energy is gone and can not be recovered.
Ocean Power is currently installing their Utility-sized bouys off the Oregon Coast, with the first 14 being a 2MW power plant for the city of Reedsport (providing about a quarter of the needed electricity for that resort community). The BBC article doesn't say what the expected output of the Scottish plant, using different technology, would be. Anybody know how the power output compares?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sorry, it's "high pressure oil" (from their interactive presentation).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"We canna create any more power, Captain! They're wiggling as fast as they can!"
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Public Radio International had a 5 minute piece on this a few weeks ago. You can listen here if you can play wma.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Is no one concerned about the potential impact this will have, by providing a drag on the waves that would else naturally strike the coast, thus potentially reducing the habitat for species adatped to the wave-heavy environment of Scotland's coast? What about the mollusks and other marine invertebrates who can only spread and prosper via wave transort...
Its just like those people who advocate wind power and never consider the impact of slowing down the world's winds, thus reducing the natural spread of wind-bourne seeds and so on...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
So, this whole system is just a series of tubes?
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.
When have you ever seen a wave 15meters high excluding major storms?
Is no one concerned about the potential impact this will have, by providing a drag on the waves that would else naturally strike the coast...?
:D
IANAS, but (1) there's not enough of these to have any forseeable impact at the moment and (2) ocean movement energy is supplied by the tides, which are powered by gravitational forces between the earth, sun and the moon. So if anything, this is solar power.
Orientate \O"ri*en*tate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Orientated; p. pr. & vb. n. Orientating.] [From Orient.] [1913 Webster] 1. To place or turn toward the east; to cause to assume an easterly direction, or to veer eastward. [1913 Webster]
> 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 are plans afoot to harness the ridiculously powerful tides of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, and build a turbine of similar generating power to this contraption. The tide there sometimes moves as fast as you can jog.Here's a BBC report on it.
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.
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.
Fair point. It might be the case that I am a little biased, as one of the engineers working on the project is a friend of mine. He would be the first to admit that the greatest engineering challenge is to dissipate enough power from the system to stop it getting thrashed into pieces. If your local pier is anything like mine, the businesses probably did not prioritise the highest of engineering standards. Perhaps it would be more useful to compare the Pelamis with a ship. Yes, it needs occasional repair; no, putting it out to sea is not a waste of time.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
"Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time." Danny Vinyard -American History X
A much bigger problem is that the waves are generated by the pull from the moon (or so I was told). If we reduce the amount or amplitude of ocean waves, this could have an effect on the moon.
Think about it... just like current can create a magnetic field and a magnetic field can create a current, the gravitational pull from the moon is creating waves.
If we stop these waves, the moon's orbit could change.
We will all die because we wanted to create clean energy.
Let's stop this madness before it's too late.
"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.
Scotland has two major rivers, the Forth & Clyde. The Forth has a 6m tidal range & the Clyde has about 2m at the mouth of the estuary. Though the daily volume of water may not be as great as some other rivers, the water volume should still be large enough to completely power the electricity requirements for the populations surrounding each river.
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Compare to what's planned for the River Mersey (tidal range 8-10m). This may generate a consistent two gigawatts of electricity - about 3x the requirement for the entire Liverpool conurbation (Merseyside).
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/617
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?
handed out advice: avoid patent thickets. If an area of technology is covered by many patents held by various patent holders, just give up. All the patent holders will believe that their own one is the key patent that deserves the lions share of the royalties and you will never be able to complete the multiway patent negotiations on reasonable terms. When the people with the money say "we are not investing in areas covered by patent thickets" that is exactly the phenomen of patents holding back technical progress.
However the original post mentions two patents, so that is not a thicket. Nevertheless the sole power that a patent grants is the power to prevent others from using the invention. Patent holders make their money two ways. First by playing hardball, pay the royalty we demand or do without the invention. Second by making the product themselves, refusing to let any-one else make it, and charging monopoly prices. MobyDisk is very confused about patents if he doubts that the companies held the patents to prevent other from practising the invention.
The economic question about patents is whether there is a public benefit to offset the undoubted cost of granting monopolies. The theory is that private companies can invest serious money of research that is unsuitable to be held as a trade secret because they can earn a return using the patent system.
It clearly didn't work out here, because the invention hasn't been practised. Understand the theoretical problem. If you invest money researching and developing wave energy machines and you get a patent on a half-solution to the problem, engineers will want to spend more money on research and development to complete the solution to the problem. If the half-solution is covered by a patent, the engineers are going to have serious trouble with their bankers. The bankers will realise that the holder of the patent on the first half of the solution has them by the balls. A patent on part of an invention tends to kill it, blocking research funding to bring the invention to completion.
Yahoo has several videos on Pelamis.
Another technology using waves/currents to produce energy is an under water turbine using two rotors, delivering up to 1MW. This company already has single rotor turbines in use.
extra: why not use your sewage to produce energy?
Rabtherm English translation
press article English translation