Wave and Tidal Power

Scotland to Pioneer Tidal â€œFarmsâ€

Yoni Levinson

It seems that Scotland, with its windy coasts and seaside cliffs, is the Saudi Arabia of… tidal power. ScottishPower Renewables wants to turn that power into clean electricity. According to its director, Keith Anderson, Scotland has 25% of Europe’s tidal resources and 10% of its wave potential. By building at least 40 (and possibly an additional 20) underwater turbines in various locations off the Scottish coast, ScottishPower Renewables hopes to generate 60 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 40,000 homes. It is thought that, if fully tapped, Scotland's tidal resources could contribute to one third of its energy demand.

The tidal farms will be consist of Norwegian-made turbines called “Lànstrøm devices”. These look like underwater turbines (see picture above), and have been extensively tested in Norway. The 20 meter blades will reach no higher than ten meters below the surface; not that anyone will be allowed to travel through the waters above, of course. And the blades move slow enough so as not to endanger the local marine wildlife.

The prognosis is quite good. ScottishPower Renewables says that these farms could be operational by 2011. One of the benefits of tidal power over, say, wind power is that the former is extremely predictable whereas the latter has been oft criticized for its unpredictable nature. However, let’s not forget that tidal power projects sometimes do not work as planned. Take, for example, Verdant Power, the company that tried to put turbines in New York City’s East River. Their turbines broke down, though they are giving it another go.

In other international turbine news, Israeli company S.D.E. Energy has signed a contract to build an undisclosed number of one megawatt wave power stations for China. Check out the rest of that story here.

Via Scotsman
Image via New Energy Focus

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Yes, Google Did Patent The Ocean-Powered Data Center

Hank Green

Oh Google, will you never stop surprising me? Turns out, back in 2007, Google put in a patent application for an wave-powered server farm. According to the patent, they would like to distribute data centers closer to users, but it is sometimes difficult to come across places to put the server farms and cheap electricity to power them.

Well, to solve that problem, Google thought maybe they'd put the server farms on a boat, and power the farm itself with a web of wave-power buoys. In addition, a sea-water cooling system would keep the whole operation from overheating.

You can read the whole patent application here. I love the way Google thinks, though I'm not entirely sure that this is going to turn out to be a large-scale solution. I mean, what happens in places without good waves, or when the weather turns placid...does the internet go away? I don't think I could handle that.

Via The Earth Times

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Capturing Water Power With Plastic Grid

Jaymi Heimbuch

The ocean isn’t the only focal point for wave-generated electricity. The Kiskiminetas River in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania is about to be home to a new way to create electricity from water.

Reserachers have devised a new system that encompasses a grid of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) placed on the bottom of the river, the undulating movement of which will generate electricity. The electrical current generated would pass to substations along the river bank, ultimately charging a group of batteries. The city is looking to harness enough power from the river to cover 20-40% of its needs.

The first system is going to be a grid about 30 yards wide by about 1 mile long, but the details on the precise make-up are still in the works. Laying the grid at the bottom of the river will help maintain the integrity of the area, which is used for fishing, boats, and so on.

How plant life might affect the system is not detailed, but researchers feel that this is a much more eco-friendly system, leaning more towards biomimicry, than damming a river ever was.

Via Discovery; photo via mhoppe

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France Going Tidal with Pilot Turbine System

Jaymi Heimbuch

There’s one off the coast of Northern Ireland. The East cost of the US is getting them. So France, with access to some of the strongest ocean currents in Europe, has determined they’ll get some too. Electricite de France (EDF) is planning to install a pilot tidal turbine system off Northwest France, and hopes to have 4 to 6 MW pumping out of 3 to 6 turbines by 2011. The system will test out the possibility of using tidal power as a profitable electricity generation option.

EDF (a company that is Europe’s biggest nuclear power producer) believes France holds 80% of Europe’s potential of generating electricity from tidal currents – equating to about 10 TW hours every year – based on its location next to some serious ocean power. So the potential of the project is pretty exciting for the country, and apparently also for EDF. But also a little futuristic. Those are some big numbers to fill, and tidal power still has a long way to go before the technology is cheap and easy.

Still, the pilot project will bring in a lot of great data. We’ll follow their progress to see what kind of turbine technology they’re planning to implement.

Via RenewableEnergyWorld, Reuters; Photo via Clearly Ambiguous

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It's Not Easy to Move Electricity Through Salt Water

Gavin D.J. Harper

This might not seem like the most glamorous bit of the energy revolution, but cables are a big frikkin' deal. And though superconductors are pretty sexy, regular old conducting cables can get pretty fancy too. Particularly when they're under 300 to 1000 feet of salt water.

In this video Gavin Harper takes us on a little tour of how complex a wire really can be. First you have two layers of thin bundled steal cables to protect the cable from stresses. Obviously, the ocean can exert a massive amount of mechanical energy, otherwise we wouldn't be building wave power plants at all.

The materials used to house and insulate the wires have to be changed as well. Since weight isn't a problem, but water-proofing is, heavy rubber is used to insulate the three copper conductors. Also included in the cable are fiber optic wires for communicating with the power-generating structures, be they tidal turbines, wave generators, or offshore wind turbines.

All-together, what once seemed like a pretty simple idea gets massively complicated. But it's just one more little step we've got to take toward a renewable future.

Filmed at EMEC - the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, UK,

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