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New Scottish Wave Energy Generator Unveiled
MikeChino writes "We've learned about Scotland's wave energy initiatives in the past, and just this morning the nation unveiled Aquamarine Power's next-generation Oyster 800 wave power plant. The new generator can produce 250% more power at one third the cost of the first full-scale 315kw Oyster that was installed in Orkney in 2009. The device's shape has been modified and made wider to enable it to capture more wave energy, and a double seabed pile system allows for easier installation."
...the energy cannot be used to power homes or industry; it can only be used to inflate bagpipes.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Well... every great plan has to have a doomsday scenario or two. This one is the worst yet.
As we know the tides are primarily caused by gravitational drag from the orbit of the moon. The moon has enough velocity that its orbit is actually widening, meaning the grip between the two bodies is getting ever so infinitesimally smaller. One generator stealing energy from this system is nothing, but once we start investing in it hardcore... the reduction in wave energy leads to extra gravitational drag on the moon, slowing its orbit... causing it to stop advancing, and be pulled in towards the earth.
By the time this is noticed, it is too early to convince politicians that something must be done now, and in fact, the push to convert more power over to wave energy.
How does it end? Well political infighting, and a new ad campaign by the deep ocean energy harvesters association begins extolling the virtues of the new larger moon, and begin funding both PR campaigns for surfing associations and contests.... and the new moon cult which has begun preaching that the moon is actually Jesus returning to earth. As part of their agreement with the energy harvesters, the cult members primary ritual consists of running Air conditioning all day long, with their windows open and bitcoin mining.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"A farm of just 20 Oyster 800 devices would generate sufficient power for up to 15,000 homes"
or... 1 device can power 750 homes.
No, all of the replies would have been put-downs, and they'd all have been written by Europeans, except for one or two from the US who would be whining about how someone, somewhere, might make eeeeevil money while doing this.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The same thing that happens when the coal is burnt up completely, we run out of oil, the natural gas burns up...we stop using that source.
Clean Oil - It's So Clean, You Can Drink It
Capacity factors I found online for wave power put it at 30%-45% with a suggestion that 35% was a good average. That is, if the unit is rated at 800 kW peak, you can expect it to produce 280 kW averaged over the entire year.
Onshore wind farms have a 20%-25% capacity factor. Offshore wind seems to have a 30%-40% capacity factor, with turbines in the 1 - 4 MW range. So this wave power unit will on average generate slightly less energy than one of the smaller offshore wind turbines. In the KE = 0.5mv^2 equation, water has about 800x more mass than air, but the average wind speed is a lot higher than the average speed of the waveheight up and down. Enough so that it seems wind ends up having the advantage. (This is just a comparison, not a trade-off. You could for example install these wave power machines in between your offshore wind turbines.)
Comparing to conventional energy sources, the typical coal plant in the U.S. is about 340 MW with a 65% capacity factor, for about 220 MW average generation. So that's about 800 of these wave energy generators. The typical nuclear plant is about 1.55 GW with a 90% capacity factor, for about 1.4 GW average generation, or about 5000 of these wave energy generators. So we've still got a long way to go before these can truly replace conventional energy sources.
Unfortunately I can't find the price for one of these units, probably since they're still very much in the R&D phase. So I can't do a cost comparison. Also note that the Wikipedia entry for this project says it has three flaps each of which is capable of 800 kW. So depending on if the summary or wikipedia is right, the average power generated may be a factor of 3 higher.
it's not british IT'S SCOTTISH!
and after the referendum in 2014 Scotland will be independent
Saor Alba agus Alba Gu Brath!
Poser - any Scotsman should know the whole island is Britain and it's hard to be independent of your own island. Perhaps you are confused as to the southeastern part of Britain? They're called the "English".
I can't stand this shit: "new power generation technology; it's 250% more powerful than the last one!" Yeah, that's fucking awesome - except that you're not really telling us anything. It can take 800kW? Great. What do you expect the mean and standard deviation of that output to be like? How much do you expect one of these units to cost? What, precisely, do you have to quantify this technology's value to the human race other than vagaries about green energy? We've got renewables - wind, solar pv, solar therm, hydro, geo - why is this one special?
This is not a put-down of the technology; this is a put-down of shitty publish-the-press-release technology reporting. Give us fucking numbers.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
If those numbers are correct for the original, and the summary is correct with its "250% more power at one third the cost", that would drop the new version to $11,000 / 3.5 / 3 = $1,047/kW, less than what you quote for coal (disregarding operating costs, which I have no idea of). Unless they mean the 250% extra works out to one-third the per-Watt cost, which would imply $11,000 / 3 = $3666, not bad but a bit pricey. Don't know which cost TFA refers to (old system or new one); anybody know?
Poser - any Scotsman should know the whole island is Britain and it's hard to be independent of your own island. Perhaps you are confused as to the southeastern part of Britain? They're called the "English".
Poster - any American should know the whole majority of the continent is USA and it's hard to be independent of your own majority of a continent. Perhaps you are confused as to the existence of this mythical independent Republic of Texas? And the Confederacy, that never happened either, because it is completely un-possible to have two separate, independent, sovereign countries in the same land mass. In fact that bullshit about the sovereign nation called the Vatican being right there in the same landmass as that other sovereign nation called Italy, well you DO know that's just a lie right?
A more appropriate analogy would be for Canada to become independent of North America, which would be a major civil engineering project.
Great Britain is an island that includes most of England, Wales and Scotland
The British Isles is a group of islands that includes Great Britain and Ireland (northern and southern)
The United Kingdom is a sovereign state that includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Looks like from your figures it's going to cost more at point of purchase ten times as much to produce electricity as a coal fired alternative. But you can read the figures differently. A couple of thoughts here: ;-)
- first of all, early tech always costs more than mature technologies. Coal fired power generation of electricity is maybe 100 years old? so maybe we need to wait for a few years to see how the costs level up compared to this new tech
- second, total lifespan costs need to be considered. You've noted the cost of the purchase of the wave generator but not indicated the cost over the lifespan: the table you points to includes this detail further down and suggests coal fired is actually $0.15 / kw compared to $0.16/kw for wave power when this is taken into account (and including carbon costs). So even at this early stage it's not "a magnitude higher"
- trust me, the seas off the north of Scotland have waves 'pretty regularly'
No it isn't. That's a small single generator of probably 1970s or earlier vintage, and you have several of them in a single power plant because you need a lot of cooling, water treatmentt, coal handling etc gear whether you have one unit or several. Many of the concrete cooling towers you see are designed to cool two seperate units for example.
If a power plant has for example four 650MW units that adds up to more than your number for nuclear, which is also wrong because there are some much bigger plants there along with the tiny research reactors and the many very small miltary run "power" plants in developing countries that bring the average down. Don't confuse "average" with typical and compare apples and orchards.
However, it's a myth that stainless steel is the best thing for salt water. It is fine for above-deck use because it gets washed clean by freshwater in rain. But the interesting ingredients of seawater can cause pinholing and stress corrosion in stainless steels, though A4/316 is better than most. Bronze (tin/copper alloy) is good and is traditionally used for throughhulls and seacocks. The usual solution (pun intended) is of course not to let seawater near any working fluid circuits but to use either hydraulic oils or a mixture of propylene glycol and water (anti-freeze) - use propylene rather than ethylene because it doesn't kill fish if it leaks out.
Corrosion engineering is a really fascinating discipline with many unexpecteds and gotchas.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
That's when we turn on the link to Shetland, where the wind never stops blowing!
The what?
We move to option number four, tidal, which is being trialled in the Sound of Islay. Tides are predictable - you know exactly when the energy will peak and trough, and can plan for it. In an ideal world we'd have tidal as our base generation, with the troughs supplemented by other forms of renewable energy buffered by pumped storage.
Last I checked, independence had support of about 20% of the Scottish population. Seems quite unlikely that the majority will vote for independence. Given that Scotland gets a lot of money from the rest of Britain, only balanced out by North Sea oil, which is running out, I wouldn't be surprised if it had a lot more support in England than Scotland.
Personally, I'd like to see independence for Greater London. The rest of us would be a lot better off without it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... Of course, you can't put them exactly side-by-side ...
Side by side in series all around the coast, or perhaps several rows in parallel around the most suitable parts of the coast? After a wave has been over one of these things there's still a lot of 'wave' left, and certainly enough to make it worthwhile placing a 2nd row of these things.
As per a previous poster, it does seem like an interesting idea to build a wind farm with these things at the base of each wind turbine and share much of the infrastructure ...
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
You're wrong. The Consent Motion is a practicality that allows Westminster to legislate on Scottish issues where it is agreed that this should happen, so that it doesn't become a constitutional controversy. It isn't strictly required, though. Parliamentary sovereignty still resides at Westminster.
A practical example is the disbanding of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972, which would have been impossible had Westminster not had ultimate power over Northern Ireland.
This is the reason the political situation in the UK is referred to as 'devolution'. It would be a form of federalism if the powers were guaranteed.