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New Wave Power Research Rising Off Oregon Coast
necro81 writes "A prototype buoy has been launched off the Oregon coast to try generating electrical power from the ever-present waves. The OSU device works like a giant shake-up flashlight. It is one of several competing designs to take advantage of a potential clean energy goldmine. It will be years before substantial power is contributed to the grid, but several companies have received permits to develop test platforms. The New York Times has an article that surveys the current outlook for wave energy, which it compares to wind energy's prospects back in the 1980s. Concerns about impacts to wildlife and fishing remain to be answered."
Experts predict that current will flow from the anode to the cathode terminal in the near future.
So... I'm assuming harnessing New Wave Power off the coast of Oregon will be about dumping Adam & the Ants in the Pacific and attaching a generator and power cables to them? Hey, I'm for it! In fact... screw the turbine. And the cables...
There's no such thing as free energy. What I wonder, is what this is affecting in the long run, and by how much.
When wave energy hits a breakwater the energy is dispersed and reflected back into the medium (the ocean). If it hits a a generator it is absorbed and converted into electrical energy. Something like this is taking energy out of a closed system which will have effects. How much? depends on how much energy you take out.
Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" is a mind-boggling future history. Very dated and politically/ideologically goofy in its early parts, then increasingly way-out as humanity nearly dies out, evolves, nearly dies out again, moves to a terraformed Venus . . . and so on, until the 17th and final human species dies out on Neptune 2 billions years from now.
While racing through the history of the cat-like "Third Men," Stapledon notes that one civilization uses tidal power to such an extent that the orbit of the moon is slightly altered!
Biggest problem with using a 'float height' generation system is the bottom anchor. The seafloor isn't all that sturdy to support constant tugging. Plus, the conservationists will have a point in that the bottom anchors will be disruptive to the seafloor ecology.
Someone needs to create something along the lines of the spam solutions template, but for new technologies (like wave power or wind farms).
I'll start:
(things in bold can be easily replaced)
Your solution advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative (*) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.)
(*) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
(*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations
(*) It will be fought by ______________
(*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome
(*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Technology doesn't work that way
(*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
(*) Idiots with boats
( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote
( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors
(*) Conflicting environmental interests
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(*) Your solution is expensive
(*) Your solution may be politically infeasible
( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution
( ) It makes life harder, not easier
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
You get the idea. Please improve it.
Not that I'm shitting on wave power, but NIMBY, questions about environmental impact and the fishing & energy industries could seriously crimp any offshore plans.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
New Wave Power is gonna fucking kick ass. Why hasn't anyone thought of this sooner?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
It always surprised me that wave and tidal energy weren't harnessed more. Wave energy is really just wind energy thrown into a thick medium which should allow us to extract it in all its concentrated goodness. (And wind, in turn, is caused by solar heating.)
But what always seemed more dramatic to me, however, are the tides. Especially living in an area with the highest tides in the world, seeing phenomenal amounts of water come in and out with a 6 foot difference, twice a day, always struck me as having a lot more potential (ha ha) than other sources of renewable energy. Effectively harnessing the gravitation pull of our moon through the tides, always seemed to me to be a solution that was too good to be true. There are days when the sea is calm and the wing generators are slower due to lack of wind; coal and oil prices vary wildly. But nothing stops the tides, day or night; the energy available and its cost is 100% predictable, which is a rarity among energy sources.
In Nova Scotia, we have tidal power plant which generates power from the tides. However, it seems to be in a constant state of research, politics, grants, and such, and is fairly small. (Even twenty years ago, it was in this state; instead of referring to it by its name, the "Fundy Tidal Project," people used to refer to it as the "Tidy Fundal Project.") The amount of energy that could be captured from even a small part of the Bay of Fundy is staggering. Yes, it would be quite an engineering feat, but not really anything beyond other megaprojects. It's sad we haven't progressed further in harnessing this.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Let me be the first to object to using tidal energy as a "renewable" resource. Don't people know that it will cause the moon to fly away from the Earth at ever increasing speeds? It's not like the energy is free, you know. Call me a lunatic if you'd like, but I refuse to destroy our moon just to let people run their massive new television sets.
Scotland has all sorts of cool wave projects on the go.
There's a cool sub-sea wave farm which use the pressure changes to drive a generator.
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/wave-power-scotland/
A huge 'snank' made of several sections, there are hydraulic rams between each section, which drive a generator.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4805076.stm
The Isle wave project which uses wave power at the shoreline. When the wave hits it fills a tank, pushing out air to drive a turbine. The first one worked really well in the 70's but just after it was built there was a bad storm which trashed it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1032148.stm
nah, have you never heard of a lazy wind? it doesn't go around you it goes right through you. :-)
more on topic. if this would reduce wave action there are loads of locations that need very expensive sea defences and we also need to generate power. could we not combine the two by floating these generators off known locations that are been eroded? protect the location and generate power. makes it cheaper to build if you can tap into the others funds.
It doesn't just slow the moon (causing it to fly further away). It also slows down the earth's rotation until it matches the moon's orbital period! Do we really want to tap a power source which will ultimately result in a day being 709 hours long, if not longer as the moon flies further away? Hmm, I suppose if we don't update our labor laws mandating 8-hour workdays it might not be so bad...
Most of the wave energy is reflected back into the ocean
Most?
Not hardly. If that were the case, the ocean would be a lot rougher than it is. On a sandy or rocky shore, most of the wave's energy grinds the bits of the beach together, creating the sand, and slightly warming the water (which is offset by evaporation). The only places where you get most of the wave returned to the ocean is where it hits sheer, rocky cliffs.
The ignorance and lack of common sense on Slashdot never ceases to fucking amaze.
You amaze yourself?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Really I don't think the environmentalists (a) believe what they say, and (b) actually want to solve anything.
There are environmentalists, and there are misanthropes who pretend to be environmentalists. The former are enthusiastic about alternative energy sources. The latter want us all to just freeze in the dark.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
saves them work - those things tend to be waterproof already.
MS-DOS: Most Severe Denial of Service
Free Online Backup
http://www.pelamiswave.com/index.php
Hm... I think about a third of our power is provided by wind. The wind farm is on prairie farmland, with crops growing underneath. Wind power is a little more expensive -- we can choose what mix of it we want in with our coal/gas power. I think it costs around 30% more. Several of the malls in the city have stickers on the doors saying that they're wind powered. The city runs the trains off wind as well. Several places in Europe make us look like wind power amateurs.
Not everywhere has the wind resources we do, but in many places wind power doesn't ruin any land and provides a decent amount of power at not much higher cost than fossil fuels.
There's a really interesting Google tech talk about this from a company who has been developing a system to harvest wave energy by placing giant floating "snakes" at the surface. It turns out that they are aiming to harvest in sea depths where the wave energy does not come from the tides, but instead from the wind blowing on the water, so indirectly it's "wind" energy.
They address optimum places to locate wave farms (sea depth, wind constancy) and even did an environmental impact study. If all the wave energy that is feasible to harvest is harvested, it could completely offset the CO2 emissions from US electricity production.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me