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Ocean Energy Tech To Be Tested Off Australian Coast
cylonlover writes "The researchers at Australia's BioPower Systems evidently looked at kelp, and thought, 'what if we could use that swaying action to generate power?' The result was their envisioned bioWAVE system: 'At the base of each bioWAVE system would be a triangular foundation, keeping it anchored to the sea floor. Extending up from the middle of that foundation would be a central column, topped with multiple blades — these would actually be more like a combination of the kelp's blades and floats, as they would be cylindrical, buoyant structures that just reach to the surface. The column would join the foundation via a hinged pivot, allowing it to bend or swivel in any direction. Wave action (both at the surface and below) would catch the blades and push them back and forth, in turn causing the column to move back and forth relative to the foundation. This movement would pressurize fluid within an integrated hydraulic power conversion module, known as an O-Drive. The movement of that fluid would spin a generator, converting the kinetic energy of the waves into electricity, which would then be delivered to shore via subsea cables.'"
Diffuseness and environmental considerations will keep this from being a significant source of energy. Bank on it.
Dog is my co-pilot.
In other news a new alternative energy project provides free fish blending service for Austrailian sharks.
Funny that people assume this isn't harmful because studies have shown that low frequency sounds from turbines, generators, and the like are damaging to local ecology.
Still, nothing is going to be 100% safe. I just can't stand "greenie" morons who think there won't be problems. They may be different problems but they're still problems.
No not quite yet. This industry is playing major catchup due to having been funded even less than solar or wind for the last few decades. There's a lot still to learn (and plenty of progress being made) about making these units durable and low-maintenance.
Someone had to do it.
Will it fit in my car?
The swells and waves have got noticeably stronger over my 50 years holidaying on the Otway coast, so I would very much welcome anything that could take any energy out of them and make it more useful elsewhere.
Then I might get back to diving more than once or twice per summer, down from better than every second day in years gone by.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Why didn't we do this before? I see nothing in this article describing anything in the technology that wasn't technically possible 20 or 40 years ago. There's not even sophisticated CFD behind the design : it appears to just be a float on the end of a rod.
That isn't good for it's future prospects, then : if the technology has not advanced, then likely this machine will face the difficulties that they had last time they tried this.
I'm imagining all kinds of horrible sea life buildup and corrosion and damage in storms causing it to be uneconomical. Each unit has a whole generator, transformer, cables, everything that it needs to support.
Someone could help me with my gravity mill and have free power for the mechanical limits of the machine itself.
We already had this idea for air using piezo-electric cylinders. Can't we just sink these into tidal areas and generate power the same way, without all the loss of conversion?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is great! I absolutely love alternative renewable energy sources to offset our dependence on fossil fuels! Keep up the good work Ausies, I can't wait to see what you crazy bastards come up with next!
Another system just off the coast of Fremantle, Australia (west coast of Australia) http://www.carnegiewave.com/index.php?url=/ceto/ceto-overview Does not produce electricity directly but very high pressure sea water which can then be used directly in a desalination plant and the waste run through a hydraulic turbine to generate mechanical / electrical energy. Given that wave energy is nearly constant around the clock, generating fresh water rather than electricity does have its advantages, doubly so in a very dry part of the world. ZombieEngineer
Variations of harvesting ocean energy go back to at least the 1800's. All of them start with free energy, we'll use the tides or waves or currents. I'm sure with some googling you could find variations going back even before then.
All of them end with the lesson that sailors learned thousands of years ago. The sea is a harsh mistress. To be put more bluntly, every single one of these ends with a variation of 'maintenance costs exceeded projections and we're going to hold off on future deployment until the technology improves'.
At some point you think mankind would re-learn that nature is still perfectly capable of issuing things that are beyond our ability exploit and leave well enough alone.
Love the idea, as a matter of principal I like renewable energy forms. But to get real it's impractical and it might as well be the patent offices #2 automatic refusal right behind perpetual motion machines.
I did a bit of work at a pump storage mini-hydro plant once (only two little 250MW generators) which is used to supply power at peak times so operates at about the same time each day. Lined up at the netting designed to keep idiots from driving their skiboats up to the outlets were a lot of very large turtles and a cormorant on nearly every float - just waiting. Each day a lot of very confused fish get dumped at that spot.
The turbines in that case wouldn't mince the fish - the blades are fairly blunt, run at relatively low revolutions and are so far apart that I entered the tunnel behind a turbine by climbing through a gap between two blades. Of course it was all shut down for the week with the pipework exiting the turbine removed.
To put it more bluntly, you are not aware to the tidal power station that's been running at Le Havre since the 1950s (for example), so I think your blanket generalistion says more about yourself than any of the technologies in question.
There's a very, very simple reason why this tech isn't going anywhere. It has nothing to do with whether or not the maintainence problems are solvable at some cost.
All wave energy is is water pushed by wind. Thus, you are capturing energy that was originally offshore winds. For any given number of dollars, you could try to tap this energy source by :
Placing your device in the air, where all the internal workings are available for inspection and you can choose a location with relatively rare adverse weather events (like the interior of a country away from the coast)
Placing your device under water, with all the maintenance costs that involves and the need for scuba gear and high $$$ divers to even work on it.
Unless we somehow run out of good spots to put windmills on land, it will always make more sense to spend the next marginal dollar on another windmill (or solar panel, when the price per panel finally gets cheap enough)
It's possible in theory that some day wave generators might be cheap enough to be worth using instead of burning natural gas or coal. But at that point, wind and/or solar will by definition be even cheaper THAN THAT because the same materials science that made the wave generators work has made the solar/wind even cheaper!
Ocean Energy Tech To Be Tested Off Australian Coast
Nowadays results would have had to be enhanced even further should they have decided to test in say Turkmenistan, or closer to home in Nebraska. It is no longer so that most scientists would have shunned the proposition should some idiot have offered them a financial incentive.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You see it is THIS, this right here, that is the cancer ruining Slashdot.
Once upon a time we had really good racist trolls, they were so subtle you wouldn't even catch the troll until the second paragraph. Like a good shit eater troll they would string you along, making you think it was a completely different post then WHAM, right in the balls.
Our OS fanbois brought true entertainment value to this site, like how Twitter could take a story about shoes and twist it into a truly Machiavellian tale of power and betrayal that always led to a secret bunker in Redmond where Gates and the Illuminati planned the destruction of everything with GNU in it. Our shills so damned good that they could make you root for Union Carbide and even those against them believed they were real.
Now like a TV series that has stay on long past the writers ability to think up new stories here lies the formerly great Slashdot. Once a great land where geeks fought epic battles about shit the common man couldn't even spell and where trolls pushed the limits simply to prove that they were the greatest in their fields. Now, sadly, it lies barren, where the best trolls can do is say the word nigger like a 3 year old saying dookie, the fanbois only call each other shill all day, and the geeks and their epic battles? The battlefield lies empty, their battles but fading echoes of a once great past. Truly a sad day my friends, truly a sad day.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why is this all written in conjunctiv? So many "woulds"?
Extending up from the middle of that foundation would be a central column, topped with multiple blades â" these would actually be more like a combination of the kelp's blades and floats, as they would be cylindrical, buoyant structures that just reach to the surface. The column would join the foundation via a hinged pivot, allowing it to bend or swivel in any direction. Wave action (both at the surface and below) would catch the blades and push them back and forth, in turn causing the column to move back and forth relative to the foundation. This movement would pressurize fluid within an integrated hydraulic power conversion module, known as an O-Drive. The movement of that fluid would spin a generator, converting the kinetic energy of the waves into electricity, which would then be delivered to shore via subsea cables.
After all systems like this already exist and can simply be bought on the market. Most currently running plants however use compressed air instead of hydraulics.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I try to stay positive and look at it this way: Maybe the slashdot audience has gained a bit of perspective as it has aged.
What once mattered has been recognized as trivial.
Irregular Pattern Design sounded like a cool engineering concept. Too bad.
Well.. Apple used it's Turkish delight, lured away 1/2 to 3/4 of the geeks and turned them into hipster zombies. Then Ubuntu cleaved off another 2/3 of our population turning them into Apple hipster zombie wannabies. Finally the remaining Geek population had nothing left to fight about when the emacs fanbois started getting laid and decided that was more important leaving the remaining vi faithful lonely in their mother's basements with nothing good to do. Didn't you wonder where lulzsec came from?
Lower your standards and you will have a much happier existence.
Well, the filtering system has removed the ability of a lot of clever trolls (as well as the ability for Slashdot users to be more creative). When you take away a toy, people either go higher or lower brow. Most have elected to go lower brow, although the higher brow trolls have been amusing to say the least (namely, Dr. Bob and the pastor dude, who I suspect are the same guy).
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
No I haven't, and I wouldn't. A 2006 movie where the "futuristic landscape" is set in 2008? Come on.
Seems rather complicated compared to the vast amount of other approaches to harvesting wave energy. This one, for example, is so much simpler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYEQaU_1Ak0
No need for divers, no need to attack it to the sea floor other than using an anchor any ship can just drag it into place. Or back in case maintenance needs to be done.
0x or or snor perron?!
Sadly you are wrong, look at the AC below me, does he come up with something witty? maybe a good flame? nope its "Shut up troll" which actually points out EXACTLY what I was talking about, even our trolls are so fucking lazy now they just phone it in!
Hell I had one follow me around for a solid month last month, now with all the effort it took to scan every single article to find me SURELY he must have put some effort into his responses? Surely he must have really tore into me if he hated me enough to go to ALL THAT EFFORT? Nope all he wrote in every. single. post. was "Die you fat fucker". that's it, not even any variation, just that simple four word sentence that a real Slashdot troll would have taken as an insult to trolling. hell he didn't even try to hurt my feelings, he might as well have just typed 'dookie" and been done with it!.
That's just sad, that's what it is. I don't know if its OCD or video games or TV or chemicals in the food but frankly even douchebags have gotten so damned lazy i expect protests to have signs that read "Fill in insulting phrase' and leave it at that. Its a damned shame, no heart or soul, just phoning it in.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nice little trick there to pretend to appeal to authority. The link just goes to a server load message on the Financial Times - was that deliberate? Even if it wasn't what would they would know anything about engineering anyway?
Why don't you just write in something that contradicts what I was reading in the 1980s about rewinding the generators at Le Havre since you are pretending to correct me instead of misleading the other readers? It's not a very big power station but it has been there for a long time. I'll bet google will help if you actually want to do something other than mislead people.
It's really just a small hydro installation using the height difference of the tides - pump storage without the pump effectively.
If you are going to make blanket statements about something it's a good idea to know something about the subject you are commenting on first, especially here where you'll find engineers from every field.