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World's First Lagoon Power Plants Unveiled In UK
AmiMoJo writes Plans to generate electricity from the world's first series of tidal lagoons have been unveiled in the UK. The six lagoons — four in Wales and one each in Somerset and Cumbria — will capture incoming and outgoing tides behind giant sea walls, and use the weight of the water to power turbines. The series of six lagoons could generate 8% of the UK's electricity for an investment of £12bn. Tidal Lagoon Power wants £168 per MWh hour for electricity in Swansea, reducing to £90-£95 per MWh for power from a second, more efficient lagoon in Cardiff. The £90 figure compares favorably with the £92.50 price for power from the planned Hinkley nuclear station, especially as the lagoon is designed to last 120 years — at a much lower risk than nuclear. Unlike power from the sun and wind, tidal power is predictable. Turbines capture energy from two incoming and two outgoing tides a day, and are expected to be active for an average of 14 hours a day. Friends of the Earth Cymru, said the group is broadly in favor of the Swansea lagoon.
Any energy source that does not burn fossil fuels is for pinko commies, and the people designing and building them should immediately be taken out and shot! We must only use oil, coal and natural gas, and we should have a law that allows for summary execution of anyone who brings up wind, solar, AGW, or science. After all, we know God fucking hates greenies and wants us to kill all of them!
Fuck everyone who believes spewing CO2 into the atmosphere isn't a good, nay, incredibly great and healthy thing! We should kill all the climatologists right fucking now!!!!!
I'd say more, but I'm at risk of drowning in my own spittle.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_barrage suggests fish mortality is quite high with this method. Considering estuaries are typically fish breeding grounds, If the alternative wasn't nuclear I'd say it wasn't worth the risk to an already depleted ecosystem.
This is a horrible, horrible idea. It will reek havoc with the existing natural tidal currents and completely change the ecosystems and natural patterns present in this tidal lagoons. Many of these species are already under heavy pressure from human activities and this could be the nail in the coffin, so to speak. Do these idiots even think before they plan these things? It's like they put ecological destruction primary in their considerations and then power production secondary. Hopefully these can be easily taken out with a boat and a proper load of high explosives.
While tides are predictable that are also predictably different than electricity demand curves. Storage is still needed to shift production to meet demand. Predictability is not dispatchability. Add the cost of storage need to shift production to demand and the cost is much higher.
I have some detailed knowledge of this project which has been in planning and is approaching potential planning approval in the next few months. Clearly this news announcement is a late push by their PR function.
I have seen the predicted costs of the Swansea bay development rise from £600M to £1000M in the space of two years, hence the exorbitant guaranteed MWh price the developers are seeking. Bear in mind that the functional generating equipment has a design lifespan of around 30 years therefore in the lagoon's predicted lifespan this kit would need to be changed out in it's entirety multiple times, accruing further major operating costs. But no matter, the end user will pay by virtue of the mechanism set up by the UK government.
As its generation is governed by the tides a large proportion of the time it's effective output will be out of the premium workday window and effectively wasted generation.
The further claim that newer lagoon developments would require lower guaranteed MWh price closer to nukes by virtue of improved efficiency is quite frankly nonsense.
No matter how you look at these, they represent very poor value for money for the consumer.
This is SOOO inconsiderate! Harvesting tidal power will SLOW the rotation of the Earth, making days longer, and simultaneously accelerate the moon, so it will recede from us more quickly!
BAN TIDAL POWER HARVESTING NOW!
(Who want's longer Mondays?)
While tides are predictable that are also predictably different than electricity demand curves. Storage is still needed to shift production to meet demand. Predictability is not dispatchability. Add the cost of storage need to shift production to demand and the cost is much higher.
Its not that simple. Tidal generation can also be used to temporarily reduce fossil fuel based generation. Throttle down the fossil fuel based plants during tidal generation, it predictable and schedule-able after all. Power generation can remain constant yet less fossil fuels are used.
First ever tidal power lagoon?
Prior art: http://boston1775.blogspot.com...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_barrage suggests fish mortality is quite high with this method. Considering estuaries are typically fish breeding grounds, If the alternative wasn't nuclear I'd say it wasn't worth the risk to an already depleted ecosystem.
There are a very limited number of places on earth where tidal dam power works. Power output scales linearly with height difference. This map shows the tidal range all over the world. Combine that with a need for a bay or inlet that can be dammed without impacting commerce or the environment, and the list of places tidal power can be used shrinks dramatically. Remember, you need a bay or cove that is large enough to be worthwhile for making power, but not so large that it is economically important. And also not in an environmentally sensitive area.
Nothing wrong with a little tidal power but just looking at the geography it will never be a significant source of power.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
So there'll be lots of hidden costs, like how 90 UKP per MWh is apparently the cheapest of the six things, if everything goes as planned. If not, well... budget overruns are not uncommon in large projects, are they? So with a lot of handwaving we might find that the price overall is really some thirty to forty percent higher than nuclear.
And with modern nuclear reactors, preferrably of the "fail-safe" type (As in doesn't need 'leccy to cool for days when you're trying to shut it off; while at it plan for something that doesn't leave 1%-used-up fuel that "needs" to be stored for 10k years. Yes, such designs are entirely possible.) the risks can be reduced quite a lot, too.
I'm really not sure which I prefer, but I do note that there's very little thought and quite a lot of agendas and ideology doing the rounds in this sort of "planning".
Nuclear is the safest power generation technology we've invented. Nearly an order of magnitude safer than solar, 2-4x safer than wind and hydro. If they're claiming to have come up with a technology which has "much lower risk," count me skeptical until they've proved it. Too often the people claiming such things look only at exotic outlier events like big accidents, while ignoring the more mundane events like maintenance accidents. The thing is, nuclear is so safe that per unit of energy generated, casualties from maintenance accidents from other power sources outnumber casualties from exotic nuclear accidents. And it's such a concentrated power source under such high scrutiny by regulators that nuclear maintenance accidents are also lower per unit of energy generated.
And I think of Brooke Shields?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Nothing wrong with a little tidal power but just looking at the geography it will never be a significant source of power.
Another problem is the cost. The prices listed in the summary are very expensive electricity ... and those are the lowball figures used to get the project approved, not the "real" numbers. Offshore wind would be cheaper, and have far less environmental impact.
As an traditional power plant engineer, offshore wind costs seem staggeringly high to me. A 90m (300ft) tall tower in the middle of the ocean supporting a nacelle that weighs about 520 metric tons (1.15 million pounds) doesn't come cheap. Have you seen rate sheets for the cranes that are needed to assemble these turbines? On land, they average in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.
At sea, with the need for a large vessel and all the crew that a large vessel requires to keep it operating, the cost is staggering. I spent a couple weeks aboard the Tolteca, a Mexican heavy-lift ship with a 2000 ton crane and a crew of about 250. Even using labor from the developing world, the costs are astronomical. We invoiced them millions of dollars of work and they didn't even blink. An offshore supply boat rents out (in good oil-boom times, maybe not right now) for hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. A heavy crane ship is probably in the millions per day. That's just for erecting the wind turbine, which is probably at least a 24 hour lift. You also need specialized vessels to lay high voltage cable across the sea floor. Adding "marine" or "offshore" to the name of anything is an excellent way to multiply the cost by at least 3.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
How difficult can it actually be to filter out the fish from the inrushing water?
Pretty difficult, I imagine. In no time at all, your filter will be completely clogged with all kinds of marine life and junk.
The obvious solution is to just install a filter over it, to keep the first filter from getting clogged.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
screamingly obvious answers to non-problems.
The problem with screamingly obvious answers is the may be obvious but wrong. Wire mesh over turbines are nice, but what do you do if sea life grows on them blocking intakes? Chlorine shock the water to kill growth? Any solution has pluses and minuses and to minimize the negative is a long run mistake.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Bonus points: it wont flood any place in land that is not actually flooded twice a day,
But, by retarding the tidal current, it WILL dry out part of the area currently intermittently wetted, and WILL keep continuously wet another part of it that is currently intermittently dried.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't know about the Netherlands but they have definitely been doing so for almost 50 years at the Rance Tidal Power station and since 2011 in South Korea.
The major problem with tidal pool generators is that they tend to silt up over the years reducing the potential output.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Same as for sewers - a filter on a loop, constantly rotating...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_barrage suggests fish mortality is quite high with this method. Considering estuaries are typically fish breeding grounds, If the alternative wasn't nuclear I'd say it wasn't worth the risk to an already depleted ecosystem.
If we were that worried about fish, we could always stop eating so many of them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ships cost a bit to buy. But cost far more to run. Running costs is everything. A crew of 50, boom just salaries are costing a lot and charge out rates need to cover the costs when the ship is not in use, and for technical ships crews are typically larger, highly skilled and well paid. It would easily be 100k + per day and wouldn't take much to get it into the 1M per day.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!