Slashdot Mirror
US Uncorks $16M For 17 Projects To Capture Wave Energy
coondoggie writes "The US Energy Department this week said it would spend $16 million for seventeen projects to help research and develop energy generating systems from waves, tides and currents. The energy agency says the US could generate up to 1,400 terawatt hours of potential power per year. One terawatt-hour of electricity is enough to power 85,000 homes, according to the agency."
And so on and so forth...
Doesn't seem like a lot of money for tidal power. Scotland is already way ahead and invests more than that.
Still, better than nothing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
With $16M spread across 17 projects, it's no wonder that STEM jobs are underpaid. Then again, with all the billions being wasted on spying (on US citizens as well as foreigners), it no wonder there is so little left for projects which might actually benefit mankind.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Hope they pay close attention to the effects on the environment, locally and globally, for we still know far too little about this to simply take it as a given. But of course, that's not where the frackin' monies are, so they'll just go ahead and they'll wilfully ignore any evidence this mightn't be a good idea for as long as they can get away with it.
Wave power has been talked up for years. No project is beyond the prototype stage, even the one in Scotland, and none of them are profitable. It's just not a very good idea.
Anything with moving parts at the ocean surface is going to be a maintenance headache. "Remember that the free surface is neither ocean nor air and that man cannot walk upon it nor will equipments remain stable in its presence. So design your equipments that they tarry not long and that they need neither servicing nor repair at this unseemly interface." - MIT/U.S. Navy ocean engineering expert. Most wave power schemes involve many big mechanical devices at the ocean surface. Fully submerged equipment or windmills above the ocean work better.
Tidal power is only feasible at a few locations worldwide. I read a study once that found ten potential sites in the world. The ideal site for maximum power output is the Bay of Fundy, but it's a long way from potential loads. Also, the way to get the most power out is to build a dam and hydroelectric plant, which totally changes the ecology in the area.
In the end the energy will be extracted from the Moons orbital energy causing the Moon to get a bit closer. Causing bigger tides, weirder jet streams and nastier weather.
Eventually the Moon will touch the atmosphere and start bleeding our air into space.
Then the Moon will touch the peaks of the tallest mountains will start unpredictable havoc, assuming anyones left to see it.
Get all the money you want, but it's regulatory compliance that's the problem, not the money - at least if this company's experience is any guide.
"Last September, with great fanfare, Ocean Power Technologies began construction on America's first wave-powered utility. Holding the first - and only - wave energy permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, OPT had planned to deploy a test buoy off the coast of Reedsport by spring.
But a year after the permit, regulatory and technical difficulties have all but halted the project. Federal regulators notified the company earlier this year it had violated the license after failing to file a variety of plans and assessments."
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/08/oregon_wave_energy_stalls_off.html
One government hand giveth, other hands taketh away.
Only 60,000 times smaller than amount spent on military. I wonder if the US citizens will ever revolt?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
You could build a wall that raises and lowers, trapping the water in a large area at high tide. Then let the water back out through turbines at low tide, then lower the wall and let the water back in. Doesn't seem like it would have too many moving parts or require elaborate engineering. Just not sure how much energy it could produce.
Is it really asking so much for a three-sentence summary to address "power" and "energy" correctly and consistently?
Any time someone talks about a power facility in terms of "terawatt-hours per year", they're either confused themselves, or they're trying to confuse you. (Or both.) If they're talking about "terawatt-hours of power", they're the ones who are confused.
Is it just me, or is "watt-hours per year" an unnecessarily complicated unit of measurement? I know it's commonplace, but there are just too many time units going back and forth. A watt is a joule per second, so a watt-hour per year is a (joule per second)-hour per year.
A watt-hour is 3600 joules, and 1400 terawatt-hours per year (aka 1.4 petawatt-hours per year) comes out to be just under 160 billion joules per second, aka 160 gigawatts. It seems like the unit (gigawatts) is already there, so why invent a new one? (Seems a bit like a case of Imperial vs metric units, but in this case they're both metric. The only conversion factor is different units of time.)
That means almost 12 KW per home.
I wonder if the US Energy Department is aware of the fact that in most of Europe each home gets between 3 and 5 KW. Even at 6 KW (which should be more than enough for the vast majority of homes), that would double the figure, up to 170,000 homes.
Cutting energy use should be targeted, along with new, renewable energy sources...
Of course not, the government has a huge fucking military!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
It's hard to imagine a revolution where people are dying in the streets over wave energy.
I'm sure syfy could make a weekly (or should that be weakly?) movie about it.
That really seems like a tiny amount for something with so much potential, as opposed to the amount of money that is spent on acquir... securi... liberati... oil.
We need money in various areas, but 2 biggies that are being missed are geo-thermal along with thorium fission. I would love to see us allocate 1B for each.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think the media should start converting these piddling amounts of money spent on non-military projects to a new unit called the Warbuck. In this case, the project is funded at 0.0000167 Warbucks.
This message brought to you the Committee to Elect Ron Paul in 2016, though if cornered, he'll disclaim he had anything to do with it, and insist he just started the organization, and really just let anybody at all make statements on his behalf.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A watt is a measurement of rate of flow.
A watt-hour is a volume of energy, based rate of flow for a give period of time. 3.6 petawatt-seconds is the same amount of energy as 1 terawatt hour.
When referring to how many homes you can power, leave the hour part off. Its 1 terawatt of flow can power 85k homes. If you power them for 1 hour, than its 1 terawatt-hour, but if you do it for two hours, than it takes 2 terawatt-hours to do it.
Example, 1 gigawatt-hour can power those same 85k homes as well ... but not for a full hour, only a few seconds. Roughly 3.6 seconds to be exact.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
That by harnessing the magical power of waves, we are altering the natural wave action that has existed on the planet for billions of years. We will be altering ecosystems, and changing the cliamate. Also by harnessing the 'power of the sun' less sunlight will be going towards heating the ground, and we will be changing the climate. Also by harnessing the 'power of the wind' we will be changing wind pattersn and changing the climate.
Shheeesh. I would imagine that people will only realize this if these alternative sources of energy became as ubiquitous as fossile fuels. In the mean time I guess this is as good an outlet as any for the energies of the green movement.
Sure. you don't have to burn these terrible fossile fuels anymore. Instead we will just make massive wave gernerators offshore. These 'wave generators' will in no do anything to alter our cliamate. They get their power from magic, and the laws of thermodynamics be damed.
Yes kids through the power of positive thinking you can have a planet with 6+ billion people on it and have them have no affect on the planets cliamate if we only use alternative energy sources (note for some reason nuclear fuel is not an alternative).
IMHO the intelligencia should be thinking of a way to get people off the planet rather than concentrating on a way to ensure 6 billion people on a planet wont affect anything.
But then again I am a faggot, and everying I says is gay.
Why say 1400 terawatts, then explain that 1 terawatt is sufficient to power 85,000 homes when you could just as easily say that it generates "1400 terawatts, enough to power 119,000,000 homes"?
No logical retort? WE HAVE A LOSER! Thanks for playing.
We spend almost 4 orders of magnitude more on subsidizing the digging of stuff out of the earth, so we can burn it. On subsidizing the most profitable corporations in the history of mankind. Hurray us.
Why not just capture the thermal energy and methane gas from the steaming heaps of horse manure radiating from Washington D.C.?
I think I hit pretty damned close to the mark by the looks of it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The only way to safeguard the environment is with population control
1TWh is a unit of energy, not a unit of power. One TWh or electricity is about enough to power 85000 homes FOR A YEAR. That's a completely fucked up way to state things.
1400 TWh per year equals 159.8 GW. US annual electricity production is about 4000 TWh/year.
average home power consumption is about (http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3) 11280 kWh/year,
so 1400TWh/year divided by 11280 kWh/year/home equals about 124 million homes.
That is the relevant figure, if you believe it. Personally, I think capturing that amount of wave energy sounds far fetched. One thing's for sure. You're not going to get that amount of power for $16 Million.
So what happens to the environment when we extract all that energy?
Nuclear plants can be used in a load following mode, but given that they have about the lowest marginal cost per kwh produced*, it makes no sense for them to NOT produce power when they can. Coal is more expensive, but if you really want to you can reach 90% capacity factor with it as well; my base has a coal powered cogeneration plant(electricity + steam heat) that can run all winter long, but in the summer it runs at less than half power, allowing lots of maintenance, but it never really fully shuts off.
The main point about capacity factor for renewable energy is that, for the most part it's not optional. So when you look at nuclear at $3 a watt vs $2 a watt solar, the nuclear is actually cheaper because you can anticipate running it at 90%, vs less than 30% for solar. So solar has to be below $1 a watt for nameplate capacity in order to actually produce the same average amount of power as a nuclear plant.
*Solar technically has a free marginal cost but you don't have a choice on when it generates power, Wind has a measurable cost per kwh because it has physical components that wear out.
I don't read AC A human right
16M? That's not news worthy, that's really sad. 16Bn would've been something on the other hand. That would be proof that the US government cares about the planet...
"One terawatt-hour of electricity is enough to power 85,000 homes, according to the agency." Izzatso? Just HOW LONG will it power those homes for? An hour? A year? Five minutes? Will somebody please explain to every reporter on energy the difference between a watt and a watt-hour? Misuse of these terms will result in your press pass being revoked.
This is presumably for research papers they can wave about to say they are looking into green technology.
16$ Million isn't a lot of money to do anything real with. I used to live close to one of the handful of Tidal (Barrage) generating stations in Nova Scotia, Canada. It was built in the 80's for likely a very exorbitant to build (likely overruns etc... who knows how much it cost), and only generates 20MW.
To put that in perspective, that is like 7 Windmills.
The good: Well unless someone blows up the moon or the oceans disappear (in either case likely electricity is the least of your worries) you have sustainable constant power.
The bad: Like most hydro electric ventures, you are pretty much limited to a few places you can put them. Once you run out, you run out. This goes for both stream and Barrage generation.
There is also that freaky generation that uses floats and wave movement, but I don't think this has ever been done in any meaningful way. To my mind, even should it work, it would A) not generate a lot of power, and B) maintenance would be a real bitch. Might be interesting from an engineering standpoint however.