Why not use the kinetic energy of the tides for energy
- Thread starter yhelothar
- Start date
It does work and it has been used for a long time (>20 years). However, the equipment is rather expensive and up until now it has not really been commercially viable, but it seems that is changing because of rising energy costs. I know there are a few new projects starting up here in the UK.
Besides the very large capital costs, an additional concern is raised when the environmental impact is considered. The energy that we take and use as electricity is removed from the water. Some ocean life depends on the movement of the tides and currents in very complex ways (that I certainly don't understand) and it has been demonstrated that taking this energy can sometimes have a catastrophic effect on the local wildlife.
It isn't too bad either. However, it seems wave power might be more viable and then you can put the installations further out from the coast.
I saw something on the news a while back about an scottish company which was delivering equipment to Portugal. As far as I understand the plant will be big enough to supply about 20 000 homes with power when it is ready.
I saw something on the news a while back about an scottish company which was delivering equipment to Portugal. As far as I understand the plant will be big enough to supply about 20 000 homes with power when it is ready.
The fact that you can build a tidal plant for 20,000 people and have it be financially feasible means that it fits a completely different niche than the nuke plant. You could not, for example, build a nuke plant for only 20,000 people. It just wouldn't be sustainable.
I'm sure North Korea would for a couple cases of American beer, some women's shoes, and some printing press ink
Otherwise, I believe the tidal/power thing is already being tested in the Hudson river with good success. My view is that in order to actually make this work on a larger scale though, we need to actually function on a molecular level and allow for a far more efficient transference of kinetic energy. Conventional turbines really only work well with a lot of water displacement behind them.
Gibsons
Lifer
- Aug 14, 2001
- 12,530
- 35
- 91
Tidal dams have been around for a while, but they're expensive to build and can disrupt ecosystems. Tidal estuaries can be very productive ecosystems and that's why there's resistance to building more. The energy prduced is otherwise clean, though.
Pretty good article here Text
In a "what if" mode, imagine a tidal dam across the straits of Gibraltar...
Pretty good article here Text
In a "what if" mode, imagine a tidal dam across the straits of Gibraltar...
There is already a large tidal power plant in Northern France. However it is only able to produce power for about 10 hours a day which means that it needs supplemental power stations that can be turned on and off like gas ones.
The french plant is in the exact place of the world's highest tide and lowest ebb, and still, it hasn't ever come anywhere near paying back its investments. In other words: Nice try.
Newer approaches use the tidal stream with slightly offshore installations, and in theory are a lot more efficient (and don't ruin the nice beaches).
Newer approaches use the tidal stream with slightly offshore installations, and in theory are a lot more efficient (and don't ruin the nice beaches).
I recall that some people at CalTech or Cornell came up with a way to do it more efficiently.
Make a gargantuan concrete cylinder, 80' tall. Create a giant air bubble, so that it has slightly greater than neutral bouyancy. (Only the top would be above water.)
Put a gargantuan pole into the ground, with the cement cylinder sliding up and down it. Translate the motion into energy.
This way, you would'nt damage the ecology, and you'd harvest waves moving up and down. They came up with a way to do it cheaply, too; powering 200 homes is pretty economical using these.
Make a gargantuan concrete cylinder, 80' tall. Create a giant air bubble, so that it has slightly greater than neutral bouyancy. (Only the top would be above water.)
Put a gargantuan pole into the ground, with the cement cylinder sliding up and down it. Translate the motion into energy.
This way, you would'nt damage the ecology, and you'd harvest waves moving up and down. They came up with a way to do it cheaply, too; powering 200 homes is pretty economical using these.
I'm glad that tidal plants are picking up, I really am.
What we need in the US is more nuclear power. We need to start building some plants now before our power situation gets worse.
What we need in the US is more nuclear power. We need to start building some plants now before our power situation gets worse.
I whole-heartedly agree. Renewable energy (wind, hydro, tidal, solar) just hasn't caught on and the infrastructure to support such efforts are pretty expensive and extensive (read as: time consuming). It's good that Congress is looking to lift the moratorium on oil drilling in the US, but it masks a deeper problem.
There are experts that say we're not going to start hitting hard times when we run out of oil - but rather, we'll start hitting hard times when the worldwide production of oil peaks - largely due to the trend of increasing demand (which shows no sign of curbing...). So, when supply levels out and demand increases, what happens to price? bad things. Current trends point to that happening with the next decade or two.
We have the technology and experience with Nuclear Energy, and it doesn't involve the massive efforts that drilling does. The only thing standing in our way is public opinion of Nuclear Energy, which always seems to be slanted by retarded engineering flaws like Chernobyl.
There's an excellent book by Dr. David Goodstein, Vice Provost and Professor of Applied Physics at Caltech that talks about this in further detail. It's a fairly easy read, for those who are interested.
You'll eventually find (like Europe currently does) that the aftermath cost of nuclear power is HUGE. Sure, the US and Russia have many more remote deserts to carelessly dump the radioactive wastes into, but just looking at the obvious running cost is blatant disregard of the grand total.
Anyway. What the US needs to do most urgently is get their ridiculous power consumption down. On average, the individual US resident is blasting out four times as much energy as /anyone/ else in the western world. Only counting private use.
Anyway. What the US needs to do most urgently is get their ridiculous power consumption down. On average, the individual US resident is blasting out four times as much energy as /anyone/ else in the western world. Only counting private use.
True on all counts, but I wouldn't be so quick to label the disposal of nuclear waste as 'careless dumping'. The idea of bringing consumption down is good, but our current infrastructure in the US doesn't exaclty support that right now, and probably won't until we hit some sort of recession far greater in scale than the last one.
Maybe we could brainstorm some ways to lower the per capita energy expenditures of the average american? That sounds like it would be an interesting conversation.
I could think of a few ...
Stop driving /everywhere/. Rediscover the term "within walking distance".
Long distance commuters: Buy economic cars, not supercomfy ones or wannabe tanks.
Accept that it's warm in summer, stop airconditioning /everything/.
Thermally insulate your houses, use economical heat sources.
Stop driving /everywhere/. Rediscover the term "within walking distance".
Long distance commuters: Buy economic cars, not supercomfy ones or wannabe tanks.
Accept that it's warm in summer, stop airconditioning /everything/.
Thermally insulate your houses, use economical heat sources.
I've thought about AC before... I would posit that each person in America consumes about 2500 cu. ft. (300 sq. ft. x 8 ft. ceilings ~ 2500 / person) of house-space. If everyone in the US were to AC their home - how much heat would just be displaced into the atmosphere? Not even counting the heat generated in the process.
Since ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) don't hit an efficiency above like 35%, electric cars would be nice. We'd need the battery technology to support it. And, ultimately, we'd have to change the power grid, since a lot of Power Plants use ICE-like generators (we'd just be passing the buck if we didn't).
Walking is one idea. Public transit is another. I'm with you on the commuting - I drive 116 miles daily all by myself to work in a Toyota ECHO.
Another idea would be to curb the massive amount of consumerism. People go through things like cars, TV's, toothbrushes, etc. (notice I didn't say computers - those can have high turnover - just recycle them) like it's nobody's business. The drive to have the newest stuff just because it's shiny is outrageous. Think of the reduction in energy consumption just from not shipping all this new stuff - then manufacturing....
Since ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) don't hit an efficiency above like 35%, electric cars would be nice. We'd need the battery technology to support it. And, ultimately, we'd have to change the power grid, since a lot of Power Plants use ICE-like generators (we'd just be passing the buck if we didn't).
Walking is one idea. Public transit is another. I'm with you on the commuting - I drive 116 miles daily all by myself to work in a Toyota ECHO.
Another idea would be to curb the massive amount of consumerism. People go through things like cars, TV's, toothbrushes, etc. (notice I didn't say computers - those can have high turnover - just recycle them
) like it's nobody's business. The drive to have the newest stuff just because it's shiny is outrageous. Think of the reduction in energy consumption just from not shipping all this new stuff - then manufacturing....I don't quite follow what you are referring to. Nuclear waste is not dumped carelessly anywhere in the US, and I don't see why they would do so in Europe (other than possibly from the communist era of East Germany.) There is no reason to. And in any case used nuclear material is not waste, but astoundingly useful, so it would be lunacy to dump it. If it were sold, it would bring a fortune. It would be like dumping gold or diamonds.
As far as I have been able to find, the problem arises in the US because the government has determined it is "not secure" to reuse or recycle nuclear material. For one thing, if it were transported routinely some one might steal it and use it to harm others, as in a dirty bomb. For a second and more arcane reason, the composition of nuclear material (which is all generated in top-secret government plants) tells you something about the processes that created it, which the government considers absolutely essential to keep secret, or they did during the cold war. As an example: The US government reverse engineered Soviet nuclear devices when there was above-ground nuclear testing, and the Soviets knew what we used in our bombs from the isotopes dispersed by our nuclear testing. Therefore astronomically valuable material from spent nuclear fuel is stabilized in a solid matrix of other material and encased in fancy high-tech looking metallic shells. Virtually all of these containers are still sitting on site at the nuclear power plants where the material was used. The government can't find any large central, permanent site the lame-brain wackos will consent to. It is not a huge problem though. The program I saw on TV showed the total storage used for a particular nuclear power plant -I think from the '50's- only filled a tiny corner of an immense outdoor area. It is almost criminal to waste that material.
Beyond that, it is entirely possible to have a nuclear reactor produce more nuclear fuel than it uses. Commercial nuclear power plants, after all, get their fuel rods from material produced in secret government nuclear reactors, designed not to produce power, but to transmutate particular isotopes. The US government pulled the plug on that type of commercial reactor for undisclosed, secret reasons. I suppose because in commercial use it would be too easy to determine what was done in secret facilities.
This is common, but incomplete, short-sighted thinking. It is no more wasteful to use energy then it is to use anything else that costs the same amount. It it were somehow to their disadvantage, in total, people would do something else.
What you have in most areas of the world are poor people and socialists, and not coincidently both. The poor areas are poor because in their situation they can only make very ineffective use of their resources, not the least inadequacy being they are unable to use energy to amplify their efforts. Because of this inadequacy, they don't earn enough to afford much either, which includes energy. To hold up these areas as a model to be emulated is absurd. Socialist, but not decidedly poor areas, often use lower amounts of energy because their governments intervene to block a more sensible and effective use of energy. They have some unsupported belief this is virtuous. All they are doing is making the world a little worse, and there is no virtue in that.
Of course it is always best to use resources efficiently. It is a question of which resources you take account of and how the resources are "valued." In the US the price of energy more approaches its real cost than elsewhere, and the real cost is so affordable it is almost not worth the time and effort to implement some more energy-efficient modes. Is it really more efficient to ride public transport when you value your private transport -its quickness and pleasantness- more, and would gladly pay the difference? Anything you save you could, and would, put into something else, like a better CPU
But is it really any worse to be wasteful of energy than to be wasteful of CPUs? You could also do without a better CPU. Or to be wasteful on whatever else? Anything else you might buy with what you save on energy, you could probably also do with out. What people argue over in energy issues may not truely be about waste, but about what should count and should be counted. For the most part, conservationists are trying to assert that energy has some greater value than reality itself, considered completely, assigns to it. In general, other things are more valueable than energy, so using energy in the process of making/using other things is the right way to go, rather than to not make/use them to save energy.Point thoroughly missed:
(1) energy cost in the US is still only half as much as in Europe, even less for electricity
(2) the average US citizen isn't exactly less wasteful with material goods than with energy.
Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, mind.
The upcoming excuse will be that China is warming up (pun intended) to doing MUCH worse.
It is about what YOU can do. Without noticing, you got my main point right: People are lazy, and the #1 reason for energy wasting in the private sector is creature comfort.
In your own example: More economic car? Yes. Public transport? Maybe not. Walk places if they're within spitting distance? Yes. More powerful CPU just because you can afford it? No. Invest in insulation rather than air condition and heating? Yes. Live in a warm area? Put solar panels on the roof. Etc. Etc.
(1) energy cost in the US is still only half as much as in Europe, even less for electricity
(2) the average US citizen isn't exactly less wasteful with material goods than with energy.
Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, mind.
The upcoming excuse will be that China is warming up (pun intended) to doing MUCH worse.
It is about what YOU can do. Without noticing, you got my main point right: People are lazy, and the #1 reason for energy wasting in the private sector is creature comfort.
In your own example: More economic car? Yes. Public transport? Maybe not. Walk places if they're within spitting distance? Yes. More powerful CPU just because you can afford it? No. Invest in insulation rather than air condition and heating? Yes. Live in a warm area? Put solar panels on the roof. Etc. Etc.
glad ATers are interested.
http://www.peakoil.com/
the forums, a good place to ask questions about energy.
http://www.energybulletin.net/index.php
good full-spectrum energy news feed.
The energy in itself is not the biggest concern - the bigest concern is that, in order to keep water on one side or the other of the dam, everything else is kept too. So, many marine life forms will be secluded on one side or the other, with no possible way to go.
If you wish, this is just like the effect of hydro power dams to salmon.
Another problem would be that the dam you build will have to resist to storm waves (unlike land dams that aren't really hit by 10m or higher waves). Also, land dams usually have a higher elevation between water level and turbines, while tides have some 6m difference (and most of the time you work with less).
One more reason - sea water is more corrosive than sweet water, so you need better (more expensive) equipments.
It is possible, and it is done. Just that it isn't so simple, cheap and the possibilities are somewhat limited.
Also, one could use the energy of the waves - this works too
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 22K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 18K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)- Started by Vattila
- Replies: 13K
Facebook
Twitter