Harnessing Slow Water Currents For Renewable Energy

Julie188 writes "Slow-moving ocean and river currents could be a new, reliable and affordable alternative energy source. A University of Michigan engineer, Michael Bernitsas, has made a machine that works like a fish to turn potentially destructive vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power. This is is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2.3 miles per hour). Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently. Further details and a few brief movies of the technology are available, as well as a video explanation by Professor Bernitsas himself."

Comments

Secondary effects?

[Vellmont]

I'm not a fluid mechanic, but I wonder what the effects would be of slowing down already slow moving river water. Increased silt deposits? More flooding upstream? Anyone with more knowledge about river flows care to comment?

That acronym is so 1980's...

[mangu]

FTFA: "VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy"

There was a time when creating an acronym that made a real word was considered cute. Those were the days of the "ESPRIT" (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques) and "MUSIC" (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) algorithms.

All that is in the past. These days, acronyms should Google well. Google for VIVACE, MUSIC, or ESPRIT and you'll get page after page of irrelevant sites. Scientists should try to name their projects with unique names, names that will let interested people search the web and *find* their projects.

Headlines.

[Anonymous Coward]

- for example, groins have been constructed on parts of the Thames to slow the water near the banks, encouraging scour of the main shipping channel

Has there been any ship collisions with those. If so was there a headline like this?

Ship hits Thames in groin.

Oceans, Not Rivers

[Doc Ruby]

This device targets ocean currents, not rivers. Ocean currents already have too much energy (by historical comparison), accumulated in twistier undersea currents from the decades and centuries of escalating Greenhouse effects.

River current power is what is captured by hydroelectric dams. Which have their own problems, but we're already stuck with them. More ocean hydroelectric could allow us to release some dams that have too high a cost (environmentally or operationally) to justify their power output. Though application of these generators in rivers might just be a low-impact replacement for dams. However, the dams also deliver irrigation and drinking water, so we're probably stuck with them for the long haul.