Not too long ago, Mat posted about the Searaser wave power generator—a device that uses the power of sea swells to pump water uphill and generate electricity on land.
At the time, Mat had some reservations about scalability (and the name!), but he suggested it might be one to keep an eye on.
From being like a drop in the ocean, the ocean being the national usage of electricity, tidal energy is set to become much more to the ultimate energy mix of the future. According to a recent Mapping and Assessment of the United States Ocean Wave Energy and the Assesment of Energy Production Potential from Tidal Streams in the United States, the coasts offer a potential 15% input to the national grid by 2030, meaning 1,420 TWh annually out of 4,000 Twh produced.
The UK’s climate Change Minister Greg Barker announced today that South West England will soon be home to the country’s first Marine Energy Park. The park, once completed, will stretch from Bristol to the Isles of Scilly and will have the potential to generate 27 gigawatts of power from the waves and tides of the area by 2050 – the same amount of power generated by 8 coal-fired plants. The project will draw on public and private resources with a huge boost from the world’s leading wave energy research and development facilities located along the future Marine Energy Park’s coastline.
An aquatic “bicycle pump” is set to take to the seas and turn wave power into clean electricity after being acquired by green energy company Ecotricity. The Searaser device, which pumps saltwater to an onshore generator, has been tested in prototype and praised by ministers.
Searaser uses the rise and fall of a large float to pressurise water, but unlike other wave power technologies does not generate the electricity in the hostile environment of the ocean. “If you put any device in the sea, it will get engulfed in storms, so it all has to be totally sealed,” said inventor Alvin Smith. “Water and electricity don’t mix – and sea water is particularly corrosive – so most other devices are very expensive to manufacture and maintain.” The technology means the salt water and electricity-generating equipment never meet, and is done routinely in Japan.
When you place something as large and complex as a tidal generator on the sea floor, there are always concerns about how it will affect the local ecosystem. This is what has been worrying environmentalists and the team at Marine Current Turbines – the creators of the SeaGen tidal turbine. However, this week, environmental consultancy Royal Haskoning officially gave the turbine the green light (pun intended).
Marine energy has long looked to be a niche area, capable of meeting just a few percent of global power demand. But this seemingly limited energy source is drawing some big players, the latest being Siemens. The German engineering giant boosted its stake this month in Bristol, U.K.-based tidal energy developer Marine Current Turbines from under 10 percent to 45 percent. The attraction, according to Michael Axmann, chief financial officer for Siemens’s solar and hydro division, is the predictability of marine power.
Solar and wind farm operators struggle to predict tomorrow’s output, and bad forecasts can wreak havoc with power transmission planning and market prices. In contrast, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun that controls tidal cycles provides a sure means of anticipating the output from tidal generating stations. “Power output of the systems could be calculated for centuries in advance,” says Axmann.
A reader actually shared news about this project with me over 2 months ago, but due to the steady stream of so many interesting cleantech stories, other responsibilities, and the fact that the shared page was in French and I had to learn French first (ok, just used Google Translate), it took me a while to get to it. The project is a “gigantic” (for tidal power) project off the coast of Paimpol-Bréhat in Brittany, France. It is a project of Irish tidal technology specialist OpenHydro and the large French utility company EDF.
The project will eventually include four 2-MW tital turbines from OpenHydro. The turbines are being installed 35 meters (115 feet) deep. They are 22 meters (72 feet) high and weigh 850 tonnes.
To make bold, sweeping changes, sometimes you need to implement a massive plan. Foster + Partners, in collaboration with Halcrow and Volterra, have unveiled a vision for Britain that completely re-imagines transportation and energy infrastructure. The study proposes a giant spine running the length of the UK which combines rail, energy, communications and data. A new hub, located on the Thames, will create a river barrier and crossing, an international airport, a tidal power plant, and a shipping and high speed rail complex. It is only in dreaming big that we can begin to overhaul our inefficient systems and transport ourselves into the future, and this plan is one way to get there.
Foster + Partners, Halcrow and Volterra have worked together on a self-funded study to produce a detailed vision for the Thames Hub. The study is unique for its scale and strategic cross-sector thinking and the outcome is a holistic vision for future infrastructure development in Britain.
Public subsidies for a range of renewable energy technologies are to be cut under plans unveiled by the government on Thursday, as ministers respond to complaints of “green taxes” driving up energy bills.
Power stations using biomass from plants or waste byproducts to generate energy are among the worst losers, with developers disappointed that their subsidy levels have been left at a level they say will not encourage new projects.
Companies generating energy from landfill gas will cease to receive any subsidies at all. Projects to produce energy from waste will have their subsidies slashed, and hydroelectric power will receive only half the subsidy it used to.
Nature has unfathomable loads of passive energy, lying dormant in unknown territories. If prudently explored, these potential energy hubs can reduce our dependence on fossil fuel energy which is depleting at a rapid pace. At one point eventually “Time” will not give us a choice to rely on oil for energy, it will command us to switch over to renewable sources of energy or even other alternate sources of energy. A brief about a few of the alternate sources of energy is given below.
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