Slashdot Mirror
Scottish Wave Energy Plans Move Forward
It's been a long time coming (2007, 2005, and 2002 respectively), but the project to harness wave energy off the Scots coast is finally coming together. Reader krou writes: "The BBC is reporting that ten sites on the seabed off Scotland in Pentland Firth and around Orkney have been leased to energy companies with the hopes of generating wave and tidal energy. 'Six sites have been allocated for wave energy developments potentially generating 600 megawatts of power and four for tidal projects, also generating 600 MW.' The leases were awarded to SSE Renewables Developments, Aquamarine Power, ScottishPower Renewables, E.ON, Pelamis Wave Power, OpenHydro Site Developments, and Marine Current Turbines. Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said that 'These waters have been described as the Saudi Arabia of marine power and the wave and tidal projects unveiled today — exceeding the initial 700MW target capacity — underline the rich natural resources of the waters off Scotland.'"
I hope this turns out better than the geothermal energy that was causing earthquakes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html
But I jest, this is a step in the right direction.
The aim is to generate 1.2 gigawatts
I think they'll find they need another 10MW to achieve what they're really after....
Removing this energy from the ocean may cause an imbalance in the gravitational effects between the Earth and the Moon. Well, not imbalance, but rather a rebalance.
If we cause the Moon to move away from our planet, we lose both our astrodebris sweeper and more importantly our tide maker. Anthropogenic effects are real, and I'm not sure I'm happy to see the deliberate removal of energy from the ocean without further study on longterm planetary effects.
Seems to me that in some parts of the world, you'd never see the ocean completely flat. Should be far more reliable than wind power.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Where's this power going to? Is there a transmission grid in place to take it to a populated area that could use an extra 600MW? Orkney's in the middle of ^*$&ing nowhere.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
If it involves messing around with waves, there's usually a Scottsman involved somehow.
Have gnu, will travel.
is that it's full of Scots..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I'm glad that blog has the word 'science' in its title, otherwise I would think it was a load of made up nonsense.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
In fact, a "Wave Motion Gun!"
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I do wonder how ships disabled in storms can be handled in such a way to assure that wind farms are not destroyed. I live in an area where hurricanes strike quite frequently and even in calmer seas we end up with tankers stranded on our beaches all too often.
All other means of energy production will not be able to compete with a Liquid Fluorine Thorium Reactor. Maybe if they ever figure out fusion. But they'll probably have to go to the moon to mine Helium 3 to make that work and Obama is death on NASA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
It has already been documented that any undersea turbines will cause too much heat, crack the Earth's crust, and cause the polar ice caps to melt. We'd best keep the seaQuest DSV nearby to stop it when it happens!
Higher Power (seaQuest DSV)
Since the most advanced device, pelamis, appears not to work at all this all seems moot right now.
Wow, I can already imagine a Scotsman with a thickly rolling "r" in a limousine with blackened windows, going to Qatar or Abu Dhabi to spend his billions. "Yes mate, I am frrrrrom Scotland. Wave sheikh, you know. At home on ya old Orrrrrkneys. Waiter ! Twenty morrre bottles of champagnes forrrr my wives, please !"
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
...it's crap!
I'm not sure it was so smart deploying a device of that design right off the coast of the country they chose.
Godzilla.
Greed, its all about greed. How can we get something for nothing. In this case energy. If any project steals energy from the waves, the whole eco-system and energy system is changed. What's at stake, fisheries, the gulf stream, the weather, whatever interacts with that energy system currently. I doubt that anyone has done extensive research on what the effects might be except on the bottom line. The ones that will make the money off this one are certainly selling it.
Lets see, I think cutting down the Cedars of Lebanon were a good example that triggered the desertification of parts of the Middle East. The bad farming practices of the U.S. midwest building up to the Dust Bowl. China's killing of birds all over China in the middle of last century because they thought they ate crops, followed by insect plauges that did eat crops. We can be so stupid with simple Mass solutions. Now we have massive computer technology to simulate some of these systems, we should before we embark on large scale projects that could have large scale effects (remember the butterfly effect, a small change here can have a big change somewhere else, like a pin prick on a ballon, small action big reaction, our climate is going through some stresses now, the number of species alive is dwindling, rain forrests are disapearing. Oh lets just go out and harvest some free energy in from the Oceans, the fish won't mind.
Dumb, really Dumb to go into things with a blindfold on. or start a project as a large project.
I wonder if there is a way to get power directly from the gravitational pull of the moon. Just asking.
So what's the cost per Mw-hr?
How does it compare against Nuclear's $30 per Mw-hr?
http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/costs.htm