Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Technology

Wave Driven Generators 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-that-be-nifty dept.
nickovs writes "The BBC report that the worlds first commercial power station powered by ocean waves has gone on line. Built by WaveGen, who have issued this press release, the system uses the swell from waves reaching the shore to force air through a Wells Turbine which has the neat property that it turns the same direction irrespective of which way the air flows through it. According to WaveGen "It has been estimated that if less than 0.1% of the renewable energy available within the oceans could be converted into electricity it would satisfy the present world demand for energy more than five times over". Now wouldn't that be nice?" Nice trick.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Wave Driven Generators More

Wave Driven Generators

Comments Filter:
  • There's one in Bretagne (France) since the 70's. I can't remember where exactly (near St. Malo ?), but I've visited it around 15 years ago.
  • From the CIA world fact book [odci.gov], I see that the 1998 power consumption of the UK was 343 billion kWh. This translates, by my calculation, to about 78,000 of these LIMPET generators. From the pictures I estimate that they are about ten meters wide. So this gives us a total of 783 km of coastline to match the entire 1998 electricity demand. The coastline of the UK is 12,429 km. So we would need about 1/15th of our coast to match out requirements. Of course we are lucky on this count because we are a small island with large ratio of coast to area. Anyway, gives you some idea.

    Rupert
  • Well a "back of the napkin" calculation gives you 0.07% of the earth's surface, if they run close to 100% efficiency. Unfortunately thermodynamics won't let you get anywhere near that.
  • Depends. PV technology ranks as a poser in the green energy industry- I'd rather they burned coal. It's closer to nuclear in terms of dirtiness in just about every category imaginable.....with today's alternatives, the only appropriate use for PV as a green resource is in remote off-grid apps.

  • It is, and was at the time, well known that there were and are a number of safe options for the disposal of nuclear waste. New and better ones are constantly being developed.

    What options could you possibly refer to that would reliably last the 10000+ years it takes for most of the radiation to die out? Whoever led you to believe this was either stupid or trying to deceive you, IMHO. Or both.

  • The described way sounds neat, but other ways exists. In a research project in my native country (Denmark - we're almost entirely coastline and no inland) some smart guys tried to use the wave action to move a rod up and down by having a float on top of it. The point was that the rod was magnetic and moved up and down in an inductor coil, thereby producing electricity.

    Not sure if it ever amounted to much in terms of actual produced energy, but it did prove that it was possible. The cool point was that this didn't necessarily have to be located near the coastline, but could be moved a dozen kilometers out to sea, making it invisible from the shore due to the curvature of the Earth.

  • The moon is going somewhere. It's getting further away from the earth by nearly 4 cm [about.com] per year.
  • Regardless of whether you agree with the person posting this, it shouldn't have been modded down. That's pretty messed up on the part of the moderators; it was posted by someone who has obviously done a little bit of research. I'm sorry you all support Ralph Nader, but why is this modded down? Solely on ideological differences, not on any real basis. If the moderators are going to mod down well thought out comments because of ideological differences, the whole point of comments is gone. So, please, mod this post up.
  • I really don't see what is so bad about nuclear waste. I work at the Oak Ridge Nation Labs, home of the bomb and alot of nuclear waste. If the public wasn't so fearful about nuclear contamination, we would be able to just send the fuel down into the mantle or at least store it below the water table. There are alread plenty of radioactive isotopes below the surface and they don't seem to bother anyone there.
  • OK, got my facts wrong here. I messed the "James Bay Project" up with some other projects.

    I did however find an OK link to some info that people might find useful. It mentions a 240MWatt generating plant off the coast of France.

    http://www.calpoly.edu/~cm/studpage/nsmallco/cla pper.htm

    But hey, if that little idea I proposed ever did get built (I think cold fusion will come around before anything like that could happen), it would be impressive!!

    Willy
  • According to this page: http://www.uilondon.org/sym/1998/pa ulu is.htm [uilondon.org]

    Uranium reserves that are cost-effective to mine will be enough to supply for around forty years. This is assuming that demand stays constant. Demand for nuclear power may well do that, but power demands in general tend to rise in a geometric fashion.

    But there exists today a perfect nuclear reactor. It's clean, no waste, basically never needs refuelling. It produces more power than we'll be needing in a long, long time. If you want to check it out, look up next time you're outside when it's not cloudy.

    How to capture that power is another matter. Current solar cell tech is somewhat lacking. But the energy is there, we just need to go fetch it. (Don't use figures of how much energy the sun puts into the Earth here. Obviously we would be collecting from space at some point or another.)
  • My wife and I visited the Annapolis power facility about a month ago during our vacation. Just to add to the comment:

    They'll give you a tour if you ask nicely, though it's warm down there. You can see the turbine and the gates, plus a lot of expensive looking old-school computer equipment that wouldn't be out of place in an early bond movie. The turbine was made in Switzerland, and is the largest of its kind (i seem to remember). It only generates power in one direction.

    There are at least two other stations like this one -- one in france with multiple smaller turbines and one in china. I also heard about a Norwegian station that used the air blown through a bore in a cliff next to the ocean to drive a turbine -- interesting idea.

    If you want to really feel the bay of fundy's tides, go "brownwater" rafting down the Shubenacadie river. 10 foot tidal waves. Gotta love em.

    Finally, all you Silicon Valley types (like me), Nova Scotia is an amazing place to visit (and you'll drool at the housing prices :)

  • I remember standing behind the turbine's vent, I nearly got blown over the railing from the wind's force. You gotta be awed by Nature's power sometimes.

    As I recall, this single turbine provided like 15% of Islay's total power usage, straight to the power grid. Glad to see it move on from the research stages.
  • a beowulf cluster of these things in a kiddie pool with thousands of Pillsbury dough boys jumping in and out of the water?

    Seriously, I have been fascinated with the potential to tap into the energy of tides and waves for some time, even visited a Tidal Energy [greenhouse.gov.au] Project down east last year and this summer I was amazed to pass by one of the largest wind farms [axor.com] in Canada, I only wish our timing was such that I had been able to visit the site. I tell you, coming around a bend in the coastal highway to the site of these huge wind turbines seemingly marching across the hills beside the ocean was quite something!

    I am glad to see things like this (and hybrid cars, etc) getting more and more attention. Here in Canada natural gas prices have skyrocketed in the last year. Why? Well, a banker buddy of mine tells me it is a matter of supply and demand (I knew I should taken at least one econimics course) and most of the demand is for electrical generation....can you beleive that? burning gas to make sparks...how ridiculous....now, if only I could find a link to that nutty idea of putting solar collectors on the moon, and microwaving it down to earth.


    Going on means going far
    Going far means returning
  • This is false, the waves have nothing to do with it....it's all the human waste.


    "Rock over London, Rock on Chicago.
    Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions"

  • but enviro-activists can be pretty touchy

    yes we an be...
  • I think this is all related to the amount of waste power plants spill into the ocean, and the number of oil spills there have been.

    "you think thats air you're breathing?"

    Better yet, you think that's water your swimming in.


    "Rock over London, Rock on Chicago.
    Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions"

  • If I smoked as much plutonium as you do, I might believe this, too.

    (I'm using the example of Diablo Canyon below because I'm most familiar with it, and because it's frequently cited as "one of the safest" plants around.)

    1. Pollutes less? Nuclear fission not only pollutes, but for vast lengths of time - the pollution remains quite toxic for longer than the current age of literate civilization. They still haven't figured out what to do with the waste material generated from Diablo, but that didn't stop 'em from hitting "Start" - they're just going to store on-site indefinitely. And the heat pollution from the plant has demonstrably (and, as a recent decision and fine shows, illegally) altered the ecology of the nearby cove.

    2. Less dangerous? Several decades ago, a number of petroleum tanks in San Luis Obispo caught fire, filling the sky with black clouds. Chunks of flaming tar fell on the town. About as bad a disaster as you could ask for in the petroleum scene. Today cow pastures line "Tank Farm Road" - what would happen to the agriculture and habitability of SLO county if Diablo pulled a Chernobyl?

    3. Costs less? PG&E is taking a loss on Diablo Canyon. Yup, that's right. They aren't even going to break even.

    As far as I'm concerned, nuclear fission can stay sustainable and reliable "on paper" until we can fix its substantial real-world problems.
  • And for an extra boost you could drop some poo in there. A form of over-clocking? Or maybe it should be called over-pooing?

  • However, large-scale on-shore wave power generating stations could face similar problems to those encountered by some windfarm projects, where opposition has focused on the aesthetic and nose impact of the machinery on the environment.

    My, my, what violent opposition. I personally don't think it's worth a shot to the nose.

    I'm totally off-topic, I know. Moderate as you will.

    Sorry, but that typo was just too hilarious to ignore.

  • They have those already on Iceland, if memory serves me correct...

  • Some background [tve.org] about this method of energy production.
    I also saw some stuff about Wavegen developing "Powerbuoy...an offshore multi MW floating wave station in conjunction with the oil industry...".

    All of these sound neat, but how many of these things would you have to have to actually produce serious (enough to power cities) amounts of power?
  • PV technology...is closer to nuclear in terms of dirtiness in just about every category imaginable....

    In order of clean to dirty (with a lower rank being cleaner), the three technologies being discussed rank:

    1. Nuclear
    2. Solar photovoltaic (PV)
    3. Coal

    PV and coal are close together in dirtiness compared with nuclear which is awkwardly cleaner. Using the industry-standard linear-no-threshold theory of radiation danger (which is biased against nuclear power and has been proven to be false), the eventual deaths caused by one large nuclear, coal, or PV powerplant run for a year are calculable as:


    Nuclear: -420
    Coal:_____175
    PV:________85


    Nuclear comes in at right around 1/3 of a death (from high-level waste, low level waste, and routine airborne emissions), until you consider the radon gas exposure that doesn't happen because the uranium that would have produced the radon was mined out of the ground and burned in the nuke plant. Then you get 420 lives saved.

    Coal deaths are from air pollution, radon emissions, and chemical carcinogens.

    PV deaths are from the coal power and the cadmium sulfide used to make the panels, with the bulk of deaths coming from the cadmium sulfide.

    Source: Chapter 12, More on Radioactive Waste, from Bernard L. Cohen's The Nuclear Energy Option: An Alternative for the 90s.
  • Hmm, any idea what is the history of those particular frequencies, by the way?

    Not a clue -- checking my Rectal Database, I figure that somebody built one first (50 or 60hz, whichever), and somebody else built another slightly differently. From that, we now have PAL/SECAM/NTSC, 110/220/240 volts, bizarro mains plugs, and other pretty silly differences.

    Maybe a patent fight, or maybe because of the distances involved in transporting power in the US means 60hz is better.

    It's easier in Europe, as we have several countries instead of only one so we can pick on each other .. not necessary to go over the oceans or to Asia. Swedish are common victim for us Finnish people.

    Similarly, we poke fun at Canadians. We can't poke fun at Mexicans (as it's politically incorrect), so instead we make vicious racist slurs and stereotypical judgements. I just love human nature...

  • corvi42:
    You are citing deaths and injuries which are a direct and immediate result of the meltdown. These statistics do not calculate the deaths and injuries which result as a long-term consequence of the hightened radiation levels.

    My citations were for all forseeable fatalities for the next 5 billion years according to the bogus linear-no-threshold theory of radiation cancer-causing potential (which claims people can get cancer from any amount of radiation, no matter how low, and so therefore any radiation release will negatively affect people for eternity -- this theory, called the LNT, has been proven false of course).

    Deaths and injuries which are a direct and immediate result of a meltdown would be limited to cases of acute radiation poisoning, a rare disease. According to the same source, "there would be no detectable deaths in 98 out of 100 meltdowns, there would be over 100 such deaths in one out of 500 meltdowns, over 1,000 in one out of 5,000 meltdowns, and in 1 out of 100,000 meltdowns there would be about 3,500 fatalities.

    "The largest number of detectable fatalities to date from an energy-related incident was an air-pollution episode in London in 1952 in which 3,500 deaths directly attributable to the pollution occured within a few days. Thus, with regard to detectable fatalities, the equivalent of the worst nuclear accident considered in the RSS -- expected once in 100,000 meltdowns -- has already occured with coal burning."

    Source: Bernard L. Cohen's The nuclear energy option: an alternative for the 90s; chapter 6, The Fearsome Reactor Meltdown Accident

  • Wells Turbines (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Could someone point me to a link that shows how these things work? I'm curious as to how their rotor configuration allows them to be self rectifying...

    -pjf

  • You can't walk on a beach without it having an effect. You can't breathe without it having an effect. Let's face it, we're not talking about a zero-impact existence because that's not feasible.

    What we're talking about is something less threatening that burning a few million tons of coal a month, generating quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases that boggle the mind and blowing a great big hole through our ozone layer.

    The concept of energy creation through the use of tital or wave forces seems to me to be excellent. My scepticism comes from the fact that I don't believe we're going to make much of a dent in the energy requirements as these are driven by industry, and most alternative forms of energy can barely power a small village. That aside, I find it cringeworthy that allegedly intelligent people spit on an idea like this by running around in circles worrying about the environmental consequences, when they're negligible in contrast to almost every other method of energy creation we have to choose from.

    There are a number of variables in this equation, and the amount of energy that we are going to need to keep the population happy is flexible in one direction only : upwards. Everything else gets dragged up with it - tons of Co2 generated, cubic metres of spent fissile material under supervision, diameter of the ozone hole(s).

    Okay - you're right, we're once again affecting the distribution of energy, kinetic, potential, tidal, electrical. Well done, you've explained something, but in the context of what our alternatives are, and in terms of what you'd rather we did, what on earth (whilst we still have one) is your point?

    Sorry - just re-read it and it's a bit harsh - I'm just getting really tired of all the experts in the world who are great at shooting other people's ideas down and couldn't come up with a better solution given from now until the first horseman comes calling.

  • I really don't think you can transfer electricity very far without losing a lot of it. That much wire just builds up in resistance too quickly even with those big fat wires they hang.

    This probably belonged in my initial post, but don't forget all the talk of "moving coastlines" that the global warming people keep harping about. If the ocean level moves, what happens to the power? Flooded or dried up. Either way, not very stable.

    I think the whole harness the ocean thing is cool, but not very practical for powering the planet. Maybe little pieces of it.
  • HeghmoH:
    Uranium reserves that are cost-effective to mine will be enough to supply for around forty years.

    These are known reserves. Historically, known reserves are unrealistically low estimates of true cost-effective reserves since mining companies are loathe to spend money on costly exploration beyond what is necessary to establish proof of enough capacity for the next few decades. The 1978 known reserves of oil ran out in the 80's. We now have twice those known reserves.

    Also, these are conventional reserves. The nuclear energy in the fissionable material (uranium, thorium and plutonium) present as impurities in the coal that's burned every year in the U.S. is greater than the combustible energy of the coal. This is an unconventional uranium reserve. The uranium (and thorium and plutonium) in the captured fly ash could be easily extracted using known technologies and used to power nuke plants. Better yet, the coal plants could be decommissioned and the coal mined strictly for its uranium/thorium/plutonium content.

    Other unconventional sources are granite and seawater.
    Seawater contains 5 billion tons of uranium, enough to supply all the world's electricity for several million years. But in addition, rivers are constantly disolving uranium out of rock and carrying it into the oceans, renewing the oceans' supply at a rate suffient to provide 25 times the world's present total electricity usage. In fact, breeder rectors operating on uranium extracted from the oceans could produce all the energy humankind will ever need without the cost of electricity increasing by even 1% due to raw fuel costs.


    -- Bernard L. Cohen, The Nuclear Energy Option: An Alternative for the Nineties

  • Operating your own power plant is extremely dangerous and is wasteful of resources since excess capacity must be on hand to deal with the fact that your usage could vary wildly compared to the more moderate variation in usage by a group of hundreds, thousands, or millions of energy customers.
  • The problem with this system is that it has to be put in locations with strong wave action. Generally, those are places where there is a lot of wild life, not to mention surfers. The picture doesn't exactly make it look attractive & I wouldn't want one in my back yard. I think the NIMBY (not in my backyard) folks will kill this, if the oil giants won't.

    On the other hand, the potential of placing these types of turbines in the ocean not near the shoreline is very tempting. Creating an off-shore variant, especially one that is entirely under water, reduces the impact on the ecology, and the view.

    The other alternative is to replace harbor walls or water-breaks with these generators. If you do that for commercial harbors, you will get the benefit, without the cost.

    Overall, this is a great idea. Although it was originally invented in the 1970's, so it's an old idea. It's just been implemented for the first time.

    Thalia
  • CoolAss:
    Yes, you can build breeder reactors which use depleted uranium to run the plant, and this would give us nearly 1000 years of electricity...
    As the efficiency of fuel usage goes up, as in the case of breeder reactors, the cost per unit of energy produced goes down proportionately. Therefore you can tap reserves that were previously considered uneconomic -- such as seawater which would provide far more than 5 billion years of energy, if only the earth would last that long.

    but there is one problem, the waste from a breeder reactor is WEAPONS GRADE PLUTONIUM.
    There are many ways of obtaining nuclear weapons materials. Refining spent fuel from breeder reactors is one of the more difficult. Therefore, weapons proliferation caused by breeder reactors is a non-issue.

    ...for those of you who are planning on saying "But fusion doesn't work!!" We reached break-even in 1983, and can acheive temperatures of over 150 million C. When we hit around 180m C, we will have a sustainable reaction which will basically solve the worlds energy problems.
    There is a difference between a sustainable rection and a workable power-plant. There is a difference between a workable power-plant and a constructable power-plant. There is a difference between a constructable power-plant and an economically constructable power-plant.

    And since when did the world have energy problems?
  • corvi42:
    Please illustrate the various worker accidents that might occur with wave-generated electricity
    Wave-generation plants, like windmills, would likely have massive maintenance requirements. Perhaps they would be much higher since seawater is highly corrosive. Maintenance of heavy machinery is some of the most dangerous employment the modern world offers. And there would be lots of this employment since wave energy, being a form of solar energy, is extremely diffuse compared to nuclear energy.
  • corvi42:
    If it takes 10,000 years for some material to become nontoxic, how can anyone possibly guarantee it will remain safely contained for that long?
    After 500 years, high level nuclear waste is less radioactive than the ore it was mined from.

    There are no guarantees it will remain safely contained for any amount of time. Requiring that the by-far single safest energy technology ever invented be the only energy technology to be held to a standard of absolute safety will lead to the heavy use of rather unsafe energy technologies such as solar and to a much greater extent the hyper-deadly coal when it turns out time and time again that solar can't meet our needs.
  • Er... Sorry to intrude, but this concept uses ocean waves, which are formed by wind blowing on water, and have nothing to do with the moon, which causes tides.
  • The other consideration is that they estimated 0.1% of the energy would be needed to power 5 times more than we use currently (no pun intended). That means that _IF_ this is our only source of energy (which it won't be), we would be using such a small percentage of the energy that it the impact may be virtually impercievable.
  • what about a volcanic based steam turbine?

    Lava is hot because it is heated by decaying uranium and thorium. And radioactive potassium; forgot that one.

    http://rglsun1.geol.vt.edu/seus.html/a& gt; [vt.edu]
  • When all the oil runs out in 50 years, we should just turn all the offshore platforms into wave generators.
  • I haven't seen anyone mention (though I admit I haven't read all of the posts) that the energy source here is primarily the Sun. Waves are driven by wind and weather is driven primarily by the Sun so this wave generator is a clever solar collector.

    A tide-driven generator is fundamentally different. It's interesting to consider using the energy stored in the earth's rotation. You can extract a lot of energy before, say, adding a second to a decade (try the calculation some time). I'll leave that environmental impact discussion up to the replies here.

    One way to do this is to use the Earth's oceans as a large cam to pump something (floating on top) up and down---that's a tidal generator.

  • Actually if the moon crashed into the earth I think we would only have to worry about ONE wave, and that would be the least of my worries at that point.
  • What's your source for wind farms altering weather patterns? I have never heard of such a thing, and I worked for many years in the wind energy industry.
  • A quick perusal of this company's web site will show you that they've thought of that. First off, the on-shore generator is designed to minimise visual impact. It does a reasonably good idea. From their photos, I would say it's no worse than a life guard shack or something similar.

    There is also an offshore variant. It sits in 15m of water within 1km of the shore. It's bright yellow, presumably so ships don't run into it. It's probably less than 3 meters high, when it doesn't have the optional wind power attachment. It generates 2MW w/o wind turbine, 3.5 with. Groups of them can function as a breakwater, which may not be valuable for a resort area, but for a port town without a bay, it's great.

    To me, the real promise of this technology is in use as a breakwater. I'm from Oregon. There are many, many places were artificial jetties have been created to make it possible/easier to operate a port on the coast. Instead of just letting the waves dash themselves to death on the rocks and sand of the jetties, these generators make them useful.

    And don't worry about ecological disruption. Waves break, force a bunch of water onto the beach, and then that water flows back into the ocean. All the energy of the waves is being transformed into sound and heat. By sucking a little of that energy out, we just decrease the amount of sound and heat comming off of the waves. As the electricity is used to do work, heat is produced. So there's no real net change in energy flow. And don't even think about hurting the environment by stealing a little heat. It's completely negligable.
  • How many of these stations would it take to get that "less than 0.1%" though?

    Live to Learn
    Learn to Lie

  • Man, I saw this headline and thought "Wave Driven Generators... I'd need a tidal harness and, what, Photon/Wave Mechanics?" Ugh. Alpha Centauri is too addictive.

    "Think I'll take some crack to slow down."
    -- P.J. O'Rourke


    "Blow up your TV/Throw away your paper/
    Move to the country/Build you a home"
  • The thing is - I've actually *been there* - I've stood on top of this thing. In answer to your particular query there is *VERY* little impact of any kind on the surrounding country (Islay is where some of my family lives and is one of the best paradises left in this country (Scotland)) the only thing you notice is a very small block of concrete nestled between the rocks and a whole shit load of noise, I went to see the new Wavegen site (there is a pre-existing one which was a test bed) in a storm and it's LOUD *;) Why not go see for your self? You wouldn't mind a few of them around if you had seen one. Oh Yes, and I know I wasn't supposed to climb on top. Sorry. PD.
  • How would something like this affect the enviroment? I'm sure it's a lot nicer then fossil fuels and nuclear waster, but what about animal habitats? How much beach space would be required to make this feasible? Where would you even put these generators? Certinly not on my beach!
  • > It is also the home of the only tidal energy plant in the Western hemisphere

    There's one in France [murdoch.edu.au] which predates the Bay of Fundy by some 18 years, and produce 240Mw versus ~20Mw from the Fundy plant.

  • Does this include toilet waves? My toilet overflows a lot, so perhaps I could hook up my personal computer to my toilet? I think Sisco should get right on this.
  • That still sounds like awfully lots of energy, and I don't think we are going to harvest that much energy from the ocean -- ever. I dont know the exact numbers, but id wager dollars to donuts that the worlds energy consumption in 1900 was probably .1% of what it is today. In another hundred years we could be easily using the energy equivalent of the wave energy in all the worlds oceans, and having .1% of that energy coming directly from the ocean itself. Never underestimate the doubling power of technology

  • I already get my electricity from Greenmountain.Com, because they use renewable energy sources.... mostly.

    Sometimes I feel guilty about the amount of juice I use up with my LAN at home, especially since the computers outnumber the people in my house by a ratio of 3:1.

    But, if I'm getting my electricity from something like this (ie, 100% renewable and very abundant), then maybe that annoying voice in my mind will BACK THE HELL OFF and let me sleep better.

    SirPoopsalot

    PS: first *real* post?

  • Due to strong American commercialistic competition this will not happen. The gasoline companies don't want electric cars, the fuel companies won't want hydro electric wave generators running the show. Their pockets are more important than the enviroment.
  • pose no such risk
    The cost line - say the 100 meters centered where water meets land - is a very important natural space. As you mentioned Dams can block spawning runs ect, but this plan also has a very negative effect of destroying that coast line which seabirds, turtles, rodents, mammals ect ect use. The waters edge is used by many animals - the habitat lost if you lined the coasts with this type of generator would be immense. Animals need a variety of different spaces - and removing coast lines destroys a vital, independant, specific habitat.

    I would be very much in favour of renewable, clean sources of energy being developed - this I feel is a very exciting opportunity and technology BUT what really has to be addressed is the flagrant overconsumption in NorthAmerica. We can increase the amount of power 'till the cows come home' and create it in many clean/viable ways, but when you analyze the issue this does not address the root problem it simply masks it.

    Taken from this months Adbuster [adbustesr.org] magazine: ...Storms are growing more intense, more frequent. And --Surprise, surprise -- it has something to do with all that buying. As a standard rule of thumb, spending a dollar in our economy uses about a liter of oil. for manufacturing, shipping advertising, running whatever item you've purchased. Not every purchase is equal, obviously. Buying a used bike at a garage sale is different from buying a Ford Exploiter. But as a rule of thumb it works. If you spend, you heat: Hurricanes ' R' Us. Ask yourself these two questions if you want to understand the physical constraints we face: could the six billion people now inhabiting the Earth (soon to be ten billion) all consume like middle-class Americans without overwhelming the planet? If we keep consuming in such a fashion, will they want to try?"

    Later it continues:

    "...before he went off to Rio de Janeiro for the 1992 Earth Summit, George Bush the Elder said that while he was willing to talk about the environment, "the American way of life is not negotiable." His successor, Bill Clinton, remarked famously that "it's the economy, stupid." Everything we see around us reinforces that message of inevitability: cars get larger each year, and homes too"

    This is a root issue to be concerned with.
  • This would be great for people near a shoreline with good enough wave action to get it going, but transporting the electricity from the coast, to say, Nebraska wouldn't be very cost effective. Even if you were on the coast, I wonder how many of the coasts near major population centers have enough wave action to make this worthwhile. It would be cool if it really is "low cost" and available though.

  • The Power of Sex (Score:3)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:07PM (#611462) Homepage
    Perhaps a similar generator could be attached to your waterbed, so when you and your S.O. are ****ing, the lights stay on.

    Oh, yeah. You don't want the lights on. So much for that idea.
  • Actually, you wouldn't have to anchor it. Just make it fairly massive, so that it rises and falls very slowly, and make several hundred upside down bowl enclosures each with it's own small (in comparison to the size of the station) generator in it.

  • Re:Wave Generators (Score:5)

    by dark_panda ( 177006 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:10PM (#611464)
    Indeed. The Bay of Fundy (yes, you nailed the spelling), which lies between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (near Maine, for the Canadian geographically-challenged) is home to the highest tides in the world. Some 100 billion tons of water is pumped in and out of the Bay twice a day, every day. It is also the home of the only tidal energy plant in the Western hemisphere.

    The Bay of Fundy does produce energy at the Annapolis Royal energy plant, but it only amounts to about 18-20 gigawatts, which equals out to about 1% of Nova Scotia's entire energy use. (Not a lot, in other words.) At last check, it is believed that some 3000 gigawatts of electricity could be produced worldwide through tidal power.

    The main problem with tidal power though is that it requires a great difference between high and low tides, at least a 5 m difference. (The Bay of Fundy's high/low tide difference is 17 m.) There aren't too many places around the world with those kinds of tides. Plus, there's the downside that the energy can only be gathered every 12 hours because of the tides.

    On the other hand, there are tons of places with waves. Hell, most of the planet is covered with water, so that makes for a lot of beaches. From what I've read, the technology is rather different from the tidal energy used at the Bay. (But then again, IANA hydroelectric expert.)

    Since I'm a Nova Scotian, for some reason I know this stuff. Damn Nova Scotian Bay of Fundy propaganda.

    J

  • Re:won't happen, yet... (Score:3)

    by cybercuzco ( 100904 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @03:07PM (#611470) Homepage Journal
    he bottom line is that alternative fuel will not be used to its potential until it becomes cheaper than traditional power.

    You forgot to add that it will never become chaper than traditional power unless omone starts buying it now. Any technology needs its early adopters to get off the ground. Look at HDTV, is it worth paying $10000 for a new TV? A few people might say yes, and this drives the price down as more competition pops up and economies of scale drive the price down. Same for power technology, Wind power started in the 1970's as a potential power technology, but it was damn expensive, like 30-40 cents a kWh, while conventional coal power was on the order of 3-6 cents a kWh. Some people though the technology was good, and they bought it anyways. Now Wind power is about the same cost as coal power, maybe a little more expensive, and adoption of wind is starting to take off. Wind power installations have grown about 30% a year for the last couple of years and even more as prices come down further. My point is that the fact a commercial installation of wave power has finally become a reality is a big boost for the technology. Even if its more expensive now, the very fact that people are buying into it is a good sign. If enough do, eventually the price will come down, after all, waves are free, coal and oil are not. At the point that wave energy becomes cheaper to install than a new coal power plant, the technology will take of. It may take 20 years to get things ramped up, but it will happen.

  • re:Environmental impact... (Score:5)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:12PM (#611484)
    That seems backwards to me. Removing kinetic energy from the ocean would lessen such effects, I would think. (Am I missing something basic here?)

    It would lessen or almost eliminate erosion at the area where the waves _would have_ hit. That's gotta be good for people living there, right?

    I think the only people who would bitch about this are the surfers, dude. Total bummer.

    Plus if the figure quoted is acurate, 0.1% of the ocean's kinetic energy being able to power the planet - that's a pretty small amount of the total. Plus we already alter our weather in weird ways just by building cities (take a meteorology class - it's an eye-opener!).

    I say go for it. It's gotta be better to be powered by that than by what we are now. Take that, windmills, biomass power plants, geothermal, and solar, and it's very technically feasible to power the whole planet without anywhere near the amount of pollution we currently produce. It's just that it's so much cheaper to do it the dirty way. *sigh*
  • Hmm, well, if that weren't there, then that energy would be used up in the resultant "crash" (visual and audible) that would happen against the wall there. I'm not necessairly thinkin gall that hard, but I cna't think of anything that will really miss the crash in one spot - not to disagree that there isn't something. Just that, the energy isn't going to be sucked up, it was going away anyway.
    feel free to point out errors in my thinking.
    --------------------------------------- -----------
  • I don't think this is a huge problem. For one, these wouldn't be put any where near breaking waves. Breaking waves are a release of energy, they want just straight swells. I would think areas like the bottoms of steep cliffs would be good spots for this thing. Also, you couldn't put the whole thing underwater, they are using the boundary between water and air to harness the energy. Something underwater would have to use a completely different solution.
  • This one is actually on the local grid, contributing power. This is a really neat concept -- really, really "direct current!"
  • for vast lengths of time [nuclear waste] remains quite toxic for longer than the current age of literate civilization.

    Irrelevant since it takes up so little space and can be rendered immobile.

    They still haven't figured out what to do with the waste material generated from Diablo

    It is, and was at the time, well known that there were and are a number of safe options for the disposal of nuclear waste. New and better ones are constantly being developed.

    the heat pollution from the plant has demonstrably (and, as a recent decision and fine shows, illegally) altered the ecology of the nearby cove.

    All steam-turbine power plants require steam condensers that pollute thermally. Sorry about that.

    Less dangerous?....>

    Significantly. The danger for workers of a power source is roughly a function of the density of its fuel. You have to consider the routine deaths that occur daily with all forms of power production, not just consider the big accidents. Nuclear fission has, by far, the highest power density fuel and therefore the fewest injuries and deaths.

    what would happen to the agriculture and habitability of SLO county if Diablo pulled a Chernobyl?

    What would happen is something that wouldn't be significant because it would happen so rarely. Factor in worst-case-scenarios for nuclear and you still get less injury and death. Chernobyl was and is an unsafe reactor design. Diablo is a safe reactor design.

    Costs less? PG&E is taking a loss on Diablo Canyon.

    Diablo cost too much to build. A number of factors led to this. For cheaper reactors: Safety requirements need to be standardized and reactors need to be preapproved and built faster without fear of hearings and lawsuits after construction starts which can add costly delays. Since the early eighties, France used mass-produced, standardized designs. This is the safest and cheapest way to build nuclear fission plants and this is what needs to be done all over the world.

    As far as I'm concerned, nuclear fission can stay sustainable and reliable "on paper" until we can fix its substantial real-world problems.

    France has fixed nuclear's substantial real-world problems. The reason France was able to do this was largely because France has a political system that allowed the energy sector to bulldoze over the political opposition (which was substantial and roughly equivalent per capita to the opposition in the United States), and less so because of plain dumb luck in picking the winning formula (standardization and mass production).

    While standardization and mass-production might seem obviously more efficient, it wasn't so obvious in the 70's when new technologies were coming out every week. Every utility wanted a custom power plant that would take advantage of the very latest tech. The latest tech is something you can't have with standardized designs. The second seduction was efficiency through massiveness. Contractors were continuously ratcheting up plant size by seducing utilities with higher-wattage plants that would cost just a little more. More gigawatts per buck = cost savings down the line. Unfortunately larger plants = larger loans. Add a few interest rate hikes and construction delays and you have a financial disaster.

    In other words, you have Diablo. A model sustainable power plant, but way too pricey.
  • Energy isn't free.

    Sure it looks nice on paper but that energy isn't created from nothing.

    You're absolutely right. Most major energy sources available to man are derived from the accumulation of solar energy on our planet--fossil fuels, wind power, wave power, hydro power, and a number of others. (the only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are geothermal, tidal, and nuclear power; feel free to add/change if you think of others.)

    I take issue with the notion that energy isn't free, however. Quite the contrary--energy is perfectly free. How much does it cost you to use the sun to warm your body? How much does it cost you to sail a boat? How much does it cost a plant to perform photosynthesis? Energy is perfectly free; it's our methods of extracting and using that energy that cost money. Thus, if we can come up with a method that's cheap and easy to implement, inexpensive to maintain, and able to generate large amounts of power, we can have energy so cheap that it's virtually free for the home user. The Wavegen technology looks like it would be a perfect solution for small costal communitites, and once this technology is further refined, it could provide energy on a much greater scale.

    I'm far from a tree hugger

    We can see that,

    but when I see alternative energy sources mentioned, I never see any discussion of the impact. It's as if people think that anything that doesn't burn fossil fuels is automatically eco-friendly.

    Well, I'd argue that comparatively, there are precious few methods less eco-friendly than burning fossil fuels. If you're inferring, as I think you are, that the Wavegen people feel that their solution is flawless, I'd argue that while it isn't flawless, I can't think of many ways of generating this amount of power in a more environmentally friendly manner.

    Judging by the images on the Wavegen site, it would appear that one of their LIMPET units takes up maybe 50-100 feet of shoreline. Considering that I've seen costal floodwalls running the entire length of a city before, I cannot help but consider this to be quite an ecologically sound method for energy production. In addition, the LIMPET modules can be designed to be part of a city's costal floodwall, thus doubling it's utility as generator and protective barrier. The LIMPET could also be used in this method to build artificial harbors (which are built today using concrete or stone walls and jettys.)

    If costal space isn't available or is too ecologically valuable to be disturbed, the Wavegen OSPREY units are designed to operate up to one kilometer out to sea (in up to 15 meters of water) and can generate four times the energy as the LIMPET, causing virtually no environmental impact whatsoever.

    The LIMPET units are analogous to costal development and floodwalls. Yes, too much costal development will endanger the health of the costal ecosystem, but it is perfectly possible for humans and costal ecology to co-exist. What's more, costal structures such as floodwalls and harbor walls already exist and serve an absolutely vital function for costal communities. Why not double up your investment and get ultra-inexpensive power at the same time?

    Make no mistake, there are indeed environmental factors to consider when building a system such as a LIMPET generator. To question the eco-friendliness of such a system in the face of traditional combustion-based fossil fuel power plants, however, is laughable. The ocean contains vast amounts of power that basically end up going entirely to waste; it would be nice to utilize some of it instead of clogging our atmosphere with more human-released smoke, sulfur and carbon dioxide.

    10 PRINT "This is a"
    20 PRINT "Haiku program."

  • Looking at the design, it looks like you could integrate this into a natural coastline with a minimum of disruption.

    As for the way middle class Americans live, if energy costs went up, they'd live differently. That's the beauty of economics. Lobby for higher taxes on fossil fuels, or carbon credit schemes for power plants. That'll do much better than lecturing everybody on what a wasteful slob they are.

    If you must lecture, do it in the form of example.

  • Quite wrong, sorry (Score:5)

    by GenetixSW ( 35311 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:16PM (#611506)
    Your concern is that removing kinetic energy from the waves will cause unwanted harm.

    Can't happen.

    As a wave hits the coastline, it starts to break up. Eventually, it spills over itself and the wave ends. This is the point of zero remaining kinetic energy, and the point of maximum potential energy. The wave retreats, as always.

    From what I can tell, this technology uses both kinetic and potential energies to generate electricity. However, it doesn't remove any more energy than the wave would remove on its own. There is absolutely no way that the climate would be harmed by having a man-made structure remove the same kinetic and potential energy from a wave, that it would lose without man's help.
  • the bottom line is that alternative fuel will not be used to its potential until it becomes cheaper than traditional power. So, as long as fossil fuels are easier and cheaper to use, one might as well give up their hopes of a renewable earth. money money money money money...
  • This particular generator design requires a shoreline installation (also one that faces the incoming swells). The environmental impact is the shore station itself. Better designs can be placed off shore. These huge towers capture the ocean currents for energy. As for the kenetic energy of the oceans, we don't have much to worry about here: you'd have to burn the entire world supply of oil every day for about a century to match the kenetic energy of the worlds ocean exerted in a single day.
  • Oh, man! Yeah, it "only works on the coasts," but do you know what percent of the population (and therefore power consumption) lies along the coasts here? Okay, I don't know the percentage either, but it's alot. If, say, 10% of coastal power consumption could be replaced with this kind of technology, that would still save a LOT of carbon-based fuel and therefore pollution.

    I like this kind of technology because it seems to be taking advantage of apparently perpetual motion. Of course the oceans aren't literally in perpetual motion, but it's as close as we come.

  • You're thinking of the "Salter Duck" [fujita.com], developed by Steven Salter in the 1970s and which generates electricity when spinning as it bobs up and down in the waves. Yes, it's possible (and perhaps preferable), but unfortunately, it was killed during the 1980s when its cost was overcalculated and the project was shelved. As OWCs become in vogue again, we may see the Duck reemerge from the fires of bureaucracy like a phoenix.
  • Offshore stations do have an impact on the shoreline "behind" them. You would not want to put too many of them off one stretch of environmentally sensitive coastline. Still, there's lots of coastline, much of it already developed.

  • Can it calm harbor chop? (Score:3)

    by OddWeapon ( 217817 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:24PM (#611541)
    If these thing can have the same sort of effect as the chop reducing things they put in fancy swimming pools, people might really want to install them.

    I can just imagine Ney York harbor without all of the chop, because these things absorb the wave energy. Would be really cool, and save a couple bucks of the city energy bill.

  • Surfers, lichen protest WaveGen (Score:3)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:26PM (#611543) Homepage
    Just as wind farms in Europe have reportedly altered local weather patterns, would not sapping energy from the sea change the fluid dynamics in areas near endagered choral reefs, etc.?

    It sounds silly (as was intended), but the more I think about it, we may look at renewable energy very differently in twenty years. From the long view, renewable energy sources like wind and wave may be much more environmentally sound - but far from the assumed perfection.

    The legal questions here are similar to mineral rights cases of the last century. If your neighbor installs a wind farm near your property and suddenly your natural bird sanctuary is ruined, can you sue? We know from case law that it is legally hinky to divert a river onto your property no matter what your purpose (even generating renewable hydropower). Wavegen may have farther-reaching effects on the surrounding environment, slightly ruducing the amount of oxygen in the water, endangering wildlife by changing the way the tides play out in a given hydrosystem.

    Something to think about.

    now on with the stupid crap... [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Well, a lot of the US population is near the coasts, and a lot of the rest is near enough to mountains for hydroelectric dams to be efficient, which just leaves the northern plains unaccounted for.

    Clearly what we need is a turbine that will run off falling snow in the winter and mosquitos in the summer. If the mosquitos get sliced into little bits in the process, so much the better.

    --
  • I didn't see any costs in the press release. Anyone know the $/kw capitial cost? What is the overall $/kW-h electricity cost? It's hard to judge the technology if you don't know the cost.
  • Renewable energy sources all have these things in common:

    1. They all pollute more than nuclear fission.

    2. They are all more dangerous than nuclear fission.

    3. They all cost more than nuclear fission.

    4. They are all less reliable than nuclear fission.

    5. None of them are sustainable.

    Nuclear fission, a non-renewable power generation technology, is the only sustainable one yet invented. All of the renewables have problems. Some of the problems with wave generation are: salt-water corrosion; largely unable to be located where power is needed; construction expense; upkeep expense; danger to workers; destruction of natural resources (marine environments, whether beaches or offshore, are natural resources -- putting power plants in them = destruction); and variability of fuel (sometimes waves are high, sometimes not so high).

    The fundamental important point is sustainability. Nuclear fission is sustainable on paper for at least 5 billion years, meaning it can outlast the sun.

  • The PR said 500KW generated power. It doesn't say whether the whole shebang is set up for DC or AC power (I would assume DC, but those crazy Europeans...), so transform it up to 115,000VAC and you can wire it a goodly distance. Not to Nebraska or anything, but each coastal state could be served, I think.

    The bigger danger is not uneven distribution of cheap wave electricity -- it's whether or not the enviros get their panties in a wad over it.

    If you tried to build Hoover Dam today, you could just hang it up. No way would environmental activists allow it to be built. Granted, this isn't Hoover Dam, but enviro-activists can be pretty touchy.

    Another side yet to be seen is how it looks -- if it's a Big Ugly Chunk O' Concrete, people with $20,000/acre oceanfront property won't stand for them to be built anywhere near them, which will either decrease the number of installed units or increase the cost/per (the cost of hiding those sumbitches will likely be exhorbitant). Plus, power companies buying already inflated real estate to locate these generators will increase the cost. It's possible that this "cheap" electricity won't affect power prices at all.

    (I don't have any numbers, but in general the biggest expense in a distribution industry -- the industry power companies are in, not generation -- is the distribution, ironically enough. They can cut the marginal cost of creating electricty to nothing, but it still costs you .002/kwh because of the cost of distributing that power to you, maintaining the distribution channels, paying off legislators to keep their fingers out of the pie, etc.)

    And we rednecks in Mississippi are screwed, too. The MS coast is protected by barrier islands, so our waves are in the 1-2ft range (most of the time, 30ft storm surge from Camille notwithstanding).

  • Envinronmental impact... (Score:3)

    by Sultanbey ( 166740 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @12:54PM (#611556)
    Anyone know what the environmental impact would be if one removes some of the kinetic energy from the oceans? I could see it maybe changing shorelines, shifting or destroying habitats, in more extreme cases damaging or destroying reefs, and the most extreme altering the global energy flow that takes place via the undersea currents from the equator to the poles, resulting in global weather pattern changes. Great technology if it doesn't bite us in the ass.

  • This is great news! But I can hardly believed that we actually discovered Wave Motion Energy [rose-hulman.edu] without the help of Queen Starsha [starblazers.com].

  • I don't think we should rely on that completely, though, as I alluded to in my original posting. We should use solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, as well as this. Diversification is good!

    Also note the 0.1% would supposedly, according to the press release, produce 5 times the amount of energy the world needs - so divide by 5 first. Then if only a fraction of that is needed due to producing via other eco-friendly ways, it becomes even smaller. Considering the benefits of eliminating fossil-fuel and nuclear methods of power generation, I'd say we'd see a major net gain in environmental effects worldwide.
  • In retrospect, we have to wonder what sort of patents this is going to lead to. Not to say that this is a good or bad thing, but I'd like to think that I've already thought of everything to do with oceanographic kinetic-electrical energy transformations already ...

    :)

    Actually, the idea of using air turbines sounds incredibly inefficient. Aren't there better ways of using tidal and wave forces against the force of gravity to produce significantly more resistant (and hence stronger) turbine forces?

  • Okay, so we build a breeder reactor, and then build anouther one next to it to automaticly take the weapons grade plutoniumn and extract more energy from that. (Or can a breeder reactor then react the plutonium, I don't see why not, but I don't claim to be an expert.) I know there are reactors that run on plutonium, and you convert to weapons grade plutonium to non-weapons grade by mixing in inert implurities.

    Now I agree that if security is a problem then breeder reactors are a bad idea, but security is a well understood propblem, and that risk can be minimised.

    Technology marchs along where we want it to go right. In the 1860s (1863 I think) there was an explosion at a flour milling plant that took out 1/3 of the worlds milling. The plant that replaced it couldn't explode because they used technology to prevent it. We know plutonium can explode, but we can build technology so that there can never be that concentration.

  • "0.07% of the earth's surface"

    But you can't use all the surface, you can only use coastlines...except if you add more coastline through excavation or island-building.

  • Energy isn't free. (Score:3)

    by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @12:55PM (#611570)
    Sure it looks nice on paper but that energy isn't created from nothing. Have any studies been done to determine the environmental impact of removing that energy from the ocean? I'm far from a tree hugger but when I see alternative energy sources mentioned, I never see any discussion of the impact. It's as if people think that anything that doesn't burn fossil fuels is automatically eco-friendly.

    Jamie

  • Does one use high explosives when doing nuclear excavation? Well, I suppose you do in the final milliseconds of the assembly of the device...

  • I remember doing a science experiment in HS about this. (I was on Cape Cod .. so lots of waves around)

    One of the professors was REALLY keen on this stuff, and there was an after school ECHO type club that got involved in trying to use tide swells to turn a turbine.

    The wind tunnel thing i never thought of .. which was probally stupid considering you could never hold a notebook still to write notes .. should have been obvious.

    They had windmills that they set up .. which would power some of the lights across the beachs (charging nicad batteries SLOWLY to store the electricity. That got funded by the state I think ..or one of the conservation societies .. I dont remember which .. that was quite some time ago :(

    but from a guy born to a town that revolved around the sea .. this sounds like a great way to keep us from screwing it up even more.

  • "Whats better, 1000000 tonnes of CO2 or 1 Kilo of Nuclear waste?"

    You forgot the radioactive and toxic waste from a coal plant; it's not all CO2 and water.

  • Actually they don't use fat wires at all, they step the voltage up into the thousands with very low current, this allows them to transport electric very efficiently on tinner cables, there is actually less resistance so less power is lost through the network, i.e. the cables don't heat up a significant amount (that's why birds can sit on them).

    If you have a high current, low voltage, the opposite is true, they would need huge cables that would basically heat up like a big electric heater, the loss would be so great the distance you could span would only be a few miles. Also... the poor little birdy would be roasted if he sat on one of these wires.

    Az.

  • related, detailed article (Score:5)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @02:06PM (#611586) Journal
    Wave Energy [ernet.in]

    Enjoy.
    -Hatta

  • Re:Wells Turbines (Score:3)

    by the_other_one ( 178565 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:39PM (#611591) Homepage

    Here is a fairly detailed description [ed.ac.uk]

    The short answer is that it uses a variable pitch turbine. The idea is somewhat related to tacking a sailboat.

  • It's FANTASIC

    finally we're using the moon for SOMETHING

    other than the bay of fundy that is
  • That still sounds like awfully lots of energy, and I don't think we are going to harvest that much energy from the ocean -- ever. It is like saying "if we could harvest 0.1% of all the energy output of our sun..."; the problem is not that collecting that much energy will harm the environment or something like that (which may still be possible, since energy circulation in the ocean is tightly coupled with the weather patterns on the planet), it is that we simply cannot do that due to the energy distribution in the sea. My $.02.
  • My question is, what would happen if we reduced the kinetic energy of the moon so much that the tides became weaker -- what effect would this have on the moon. From what I gather the moon's already on its way into distant space -- would the mass of the planetary oceans being stagnant, rather than chasing the moon around, affect this plight?

  • Tidal generators are the stuff dreams are made of (Score:3)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @12:58PM (#611610)
    What the press release doesn't make clear is that Wavegen's generator has actually made its schedule: the 2000 rollout was promised back in 1998. How many technologies do you know which have made their window like that?

    What the press release also doesn't mention is how Wavegen's generators don't pose the same ecological threat that other generators have historically posed: the chief alternative is a "tidal fence" which completely blocks off the channel in the same way a dam blocks off a river. And like with dams, tidal fences can disrupt the migration and spawning patterns of fish and other sea creatures, who shouldn't be forced to bear the brunt of human progress upon their tuckered little bodies. Wavegen's generators, as you can see from the diagram [wavegen.co.uk] pose no such risk.

    Now, let's just make sure we don't steal too much momentum from the moon and have it crash into the earth. That would put a real damper on any ipo.
  • Crazy Europeans, eh? (Well, we may be crazy, but you Americans are just plain stupid).

    Sorry -- just a bit of Euro-baiting. If Europeans didn't have Americans and Americans didn't have Europeans, we'd have to make fun of the Koreans or something (of course, now I'm picking on the Koreans...)

    Actually, I meant to say that the native output would be AC, not DC, but I got turned around. And didn't catch it on the preview. It was a stupid American mistake, no doubt. That's why I suggest transforming it up to high voltage/low amps to haul long distance from the generator.

    Of course, you crazy Europeans use a 50hz wave instead of a 60hz, the way God intended... (there I go again, Euro-baiting...)

  • Renewable or not? (Score:3)

    by aleph+ ( 99924 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @06:07PM (#611617)
    It seems to me that it is rather hard to pin down exactly what a renewable or sustainable power source consists of. There are plenty of power generation sources that look renewable when used on a small scale, but turn out to not be renewable when used on a large scale.

    For example, after having built a few small hydro-electric plants, you notice that you can get loads of electricity out of them for almost no ongoing costs, and you don't end up with horribly polluted cities like you did when you were burning coal. So you say, "Great! Let's go build hydro-dams", and you set off round the country looking for good spots on large rivers to start erecting dams.

    Fast forward a few decades. Suddenly hydro isn't looking so exciting. You've dammed up all your large rivers at massive public cost -- it turns out building dams is really difficult. Most of the dams you've built came in over-budget and aren't generating as much electricity as they were supposed to. The eco-systems down river of the dams are trashed because they aren't getting enough water. The eco-systems up river are trashed because they're flooded. When the dam was closed you flooded a bunch of great farm land, and now all the vegetation on that land is rotting under water and releasing tons of greenhouse gasses. But you've still got lots of electricity for the future, right? Wrong. It turns out all your dams are filling up with sediment, and are going to be useless in a few years anyway.

    That's when you turn to nuclear ... same deal. Supposed to be cheap, clean and renewable. Turns out to be expensive, dangerous and polluting. The people who told us to pay them to build nuclear plants and who said they'd be safe and cheap don't seem to be home when the plants need to be decomissioned, or when it comes to being legally liable for meltdown risk.

    So what above wave power? Well it sounds like there's a pretty good chance that it's going to be a lot less damaging than coal, nuclear or hydro, and we should certainly start using it in wider deployments. We sure could use better alternatives to what we're doing now. But lets not just assume that building wave barriers entirely around every coastal country isn't going to have some environmental impact -- to figure that out you'll need ecologists paid by industry independent organizations, whose opinions will be listened to and not just swept under the carpet (as in the case of Nuclear or Hydro).

    Final point -- the real win optimizations here are to decrease our needs for energy by looking for less energy intensive technologies and by reducing the uses that we do have. Anyone still using incandescent light bulbs? And what the hell happened to Green PCs? Those high power PIII and Athlon processors burning up more juice than ever before. What do you think those fans and heat sinks are for?

    The incentive for invention of better low-power technologies will be commercial. That means that electricity costs should reflect actual production costs, and that means we have to stop subsidising (non-renewable) electricity generation with taxes.

    We also need to stop the growth [vhemt.org] of world population.

  • Actually, the northern plains tend to be very windy. In fact north dakota has enough wind energy to provide the entire US power supply. Minnesota has a deal with its power company to instal 400MW of wind turbines in return for being able to store nuclear waste at its prarie Island plant. By comparason, the nuclear power plant puts out about 1000 MW, so 2/5 of a nuclar power plants worth of wind energy.

  • In the area where this thing is installed, there'd be less splashing, and probably less wind - especially if an entire coastline is populated with them.

    Who knows what the environmental effect would be? Perhaps the local ecosystem would be less moist, perhaps not ...

    True though, that there would be *some* impact. But not nearly as bad as say, depleted radioactive fuel that our descendants are going to have to figure out how to handle somewhere down the line ...
  • Heres a better Idea. Take a look at a map of oh say Europe. Youll notice that to the south of europe is a large body of water, locally known as "The Mediterranean Sea" Youll also note that this sea has an entrance only about 15 miles wide. Place a dam across this 15 mile gap, and you'd have enough power to light up Europe. Plus the med is situated east-west, so it gets some damn strong curents flowing through the pillars of hercules.

  • Here's an obvious solution: build them on the barrier islands.

    Not easy to do. The barrier islands are a significant distance out (10 miles? 15? I forget).

    One is a tourista spot (has a fort on it with day trips to spend on the beach) and one is a wildlife preserve. Tough to build on those. Even tougher than stringing a wire back to shore (or laying one on the ocean floor -- you'd have to lay it in the channel, as the water isn't very deep until you get out beyond the islands, plus all the commercial shrimping going on).

    Nothings ever simple...

  • Whoo-Hoo! (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20, 2000 @01:00PM (#611634)
    "this both sucks and blows" -Bart

Slashdot Top Deals

"If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry." -- Chekhov

Close