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Scotland Builds Power Farms of the Future Under the Sea
HughPickens.com writes "The Pentland Firth is a raw, stormy sound between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands, known for some of the world's fastest flowing marine waters. Daily tides here reach 11 miles per hour, and can go as high as 18 – a breakneck current that's the reason people are describing Scotland as the Saudi Arabia of tidal power. Now Megan Garber reports in The Atlantic that a new tidal power plant, to be installed off the Scottish coast aims to make the Scotland a world leader for turning sea flow into electricity. Underwater windmills, the BBC notes, have the benefit of invisibility—a common objection to wind turbines being how unsightly they are to human eyes. Undersea turbines also benefit from the fact that tides are predictable in ways that winds are not: You know how much power you're generating, basically, on any given day. The tidal currents are also completely carbon-free and since sea water is 832 times denser than air, a 5 knot ocean current has more kinetic energy than a 350 km/h wind.
MeyGen will face a challenge in that work: The turbines are incredibly difficult to install. The Pentland Firth is a harsh environment to begin with; complicating matters is the fact that the turbines can be installed only at the deepest of ocean depths so as not to disrupt the paths of ships on the surface. They also need to be installed in bays or headlands, where tidal flows are at their most intense. It is an unbelievably harsh environment in which to build anything, let alone manage a vast fleet of tidal machines beneath the waves. If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station. "The real aim," says Keith Anderson, "is to establish the predictability which you get with tidal power, and to feed that into the energy mix which includes the less predictable sources like wind or wave. The whole point of this device is to test that it can produce power, and we believe it can, and to show it's robust and can be maintained."
MeyGen will face a challenge in that work: The turbines are incredibly difficult to install. The Pentland Firth is a harsh environment to begin with; complicating matters is the fact that the turbines can be installed only at the deepest of ocean depths so as not to disrupt the paths of ships on the surface. They also need to be installed in bays or headlands, where tidal flows are at their most intense. It is an unbelievably harsh environment in which to build anything, let alone manage a vast fleet of tidal machines beneath the waves. If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station. "The real aim," says Keith Anderson, "is to establish the predictability which you get with tidal power, and to feed that into the energy mix which includes the less predictable sources like wind or wave. The whole point of this device is to test that it can produce power, and we believe it can, and to show it's robust and can be maintained."
Bah.
The real danger is these generators will extract all the energy from the tides and the Moon will crash into the Earth.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
These turbines will kill all the fishies!
But, this is the power source "of the future". So, as long as the fish are in the present, they are safe.
Actually, we need more of these so that the Moon wouldn't fly away! Won't someone think of the eclipses?
Ezekiel 23:20
Could you please inform the engineers that the North Sea is full of salt water? Armed with that piece of information that I'm sure they don't have, they can take that into consideration when designing this.
Dams.
I realize some people like to curse dams, but still....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Extracting Earth-Moon tidal energy actually slows the rotation of the Earth more quickly, transferring energy to the Moon, accelerating it. So the more of these we add, the more quickly we can fling the Moon away from us and have longer days to enjoy.
Hard to build? Just build it somewhere else, tie some cement blocks to it, and heave it overboard! See, this is why I should be running everything.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
These turbines will kill all the fishies!
No, it will kill SOME of the fishes. And fead other fishes not dumb enough to get killed in a turbine.
And I, for one, salute our new hyper intelegent fish overloards.
Hey, wait a second. When did we start using "facts" in environmental debates?
Oh yes they did! Anyone who tries to design an energy technology not based on coal or oil is clearly an evil motherfucker out to steal taxpayers' money! We should just fucking kill all the scientists and engineers who aren't working on coal, oil, and maybe nuclear, because after all, those are the only options that should ever be fucking considered. Kill scientists. Kill all of them!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.