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Re-Purposing the Netherlands' Dike System For Power Generation

Posted by timothy on Friday April 23, 2010 @08:20PM from the let's-go-dutch dept.

vikingpower writes "Built in reaction to a major flood that killed 1,800 in the '50s, the Dutch system of dikes, sluices, surge barriers, and dams has been dubbed 'one of the seven wonders of the modern world' by the American Society of Engineers. Now there are proposals to use the system differently, e.g. as tidal power plants, by punching holes in them. Any civil engineer's mouth will probably be watering when thinking of the mega-projects this could give rise to."

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Re:Great idea by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-23 21:32 · Score: 4, Informative

Laugh, great suggestion. My apartment is in a building that's about 4m below sea level, so that means I'd be able to kayak to work directly from the lounge room. Awesome!
Page 55 of the 2006 IEA "Key World Energy Statistics" shows that the per-capita energy use in the Netherlands is on different measures, somewhere between 0.5 and 0.75 of the USA's.