Leading edge: This buoyancy tube is the top edge of a 194-ton hinging device that converts wave energy into 315 kilowatts of electricity.
Aquamarine Power
Ten wave and tidal projects will generate 1.2 gigawatts of power.
Scotland hopes to ride the next renewable energy wave. Site leases for several big wave and tidal power projects were awarded last week by the U.K. government, concluding a two-year bidding process that elicited strong interest from major utilities and energy entrepreneurs. The awards open the way for six wave energy projects and four tidal energy systems around Scotland's Orkney Islands that could collectively generate up to 1.2 gigawatts, exceeding the U.K.'s 700-megawatt target for the bidding round. This is an immense scale for an industry that so far has installed only pilot projects involving a handful of small devices.
"This industry is about to grow up," says Martin McAdam, CEO of Edinburgh-based Aquamarine Power, which secured a 200-megawatt site in partnership with the U.K. utility Scottish and Southern Energy, presently the country's top renewable energy generator. Construction of the projects could begin as early as 2013.
Scotland offers extraordinarily powerful seas, squeezed between a wide-open expanse of the Atlantic and the notoriously raucous North Sea. Waves off the Orkneys's west coast average two meters and annually exceed 10 meters. Marine energy could provide 15 to 20 percent of the country's total power needs, according to the London-based Carbon Trust, a government-funded entity supporting low-carbon development. The Orkney-based European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), which includes a test-bed facility, also provides R&D support for such efforts.
If wave and tidal technologies can scale up in Scotland's waters, marine energy experts say they will find plenty of potential elsewhere, much as the wind turbine technologies nurtured by Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s have gone worldwide. "There's definitely a global market for both wave and tidal energy, hence the reason that you've got big companies looking at it," says Amaan Lafayette, marine development manager at European power giant E.ON, which won two of the 10 Scottish leases.
The challenges are still significant. The first is proving that the technology is ready for the punishment of the open water, where many wave and tidal prototypes have met their match. For example, the fiberglass rotors on early tidal turbine prototypes installed in New York City's East River in 2007 were fractured by unexpected turbulence. The following year, Pelamis Wave Power pulled its snake-like 750-kilowatt generators out of Portuguese waters amid technical difficulties.
EMEC director Neil Kermode acknowledges that the entire industry is still "working through a huge list of technical challenges." But he also sees "huge progress" at Pelamis, which is assembling a second-generation machine for E.ON to be installed at EMEC this summer. E.ON's Lafayette agrees, and says that this progress explains why Pelamis's technology will be used at three of the 10 Scottish sites, including E.ON's.
The engineering giant likes the predictability of marine power—which can be "calculated for centuries in advance."
But the future of the wave energy industry could depend on the incentives introduced by the U.K. government.
Underwater turbines could harness a massive amount of energy—but could cause problems for boat navigation.
What I don't see explained is how the power gets moved from the sea where it is generated back to the grid. The renewable industry-- solar, wind and now sea power--has to be put in remote areas. When you combine the inefficiencies of operation and production with the power lost as it is transferred to where it is used, it still appears to be a "net negative". Perhaps efficient battery systems in the future will be able to make these remote operations rewarding.
The same way electricity is transferred to the grid in other power generation schemes--wires. Why would you assume it's a "net negative" in power delivery because of some remoteness issue? It's no different than placing a nuclear reactor (or fill in your favorite form of power generation) in the desert 50 or more miles from a city and feeding in on wires with resistive loses.
When projects such as wind and wave can deliver the same amount of energy as remote nuclear and hydro projects then remoteness will cease to be an issue. Until then it is the central difficulty for such ventures.
As long as full time, full load alternative energy sources in your backyard are more expensive for you than energy delivered from the grids of massive conventional energy sources whatever their distance, consumers will always want to look at the distance factor for alternative energy.
If consumers had to pay the full cost of alternative energy no one would ever use it.
Guest (aarontco)
Decentralized distribution is actually a *good* thing because it means that you can't have a single point of failure, like at a nuclear plant that has to shut down for weeks to refuel. The wind is always blowing somewhere, and the waves are always strong somewhere too. Fortunately, the technology and the cost of electrical transmission continues to decrease, but as other posters noted, pretty much all power generation requires these kinds of transmission costs.
This article demonstrated that indeed wave power alone is delivering as much or more than an average nuclear power plant creating 1.2 gW of presumably baseload capacity. I presume that much of the power produced is probably consumed locally, in the Orkneys, but it still displaces the need to generate it in some other fashion.
Why not use the power from the wave generator to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen using normal electrolysis, then pipe the hydrogen gas back to shore to power some type of engine to recreate the electrcity.
The oxygen could be fed back into localized floating fish farms or something similar and not have to be piped back to shore.
It's much, much easier and cheaper to pipe electricity than hydrogen.
Not to mention that going form electricity to hydrogen back to electricity via electrolysis and a fuel cell, respectfully, is only ~22-34% efficient. Average grid transmission is ~91% efficient. Well, at least those are the numbers I have seen/read...
"In the United States, coastal counties constitute only 17 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 53 percent of the total population. High densities of population along coastal regions can place great stress upon the environment."
Wave energy makes at least as much sense as wind, which typically is generated in empty inland areas. At least the coasts are densely populated.
Technologies like wave energy and electric vehicles are cool but there is something even cooler coming around the bend. Soon, we'll have vehicles that will have no cords, no wheels, no batteries, no fuel and will take you from New York to Beijing in minutes.
A new analysis of the causality of motion reveals that we are swimming in clean energy, lots and lots of it. The essence of it is that, contrary to popular opinion, good old Aristotle was right about motion: nothing can move unless it is caused to move. It's called Causality 101. As a result, we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles. No lattice = no motion. Sir Isaac was right but his laws are incomplete (and he knew it). Soon, we'll be able to tap into the lattice for energy production and super fast transportation. How much energy, you ask? Enough to have entire cities floating in the sky, and much more.
Read Physics: The Problem With Motion if you're interested in the exciting future of energy and travel.
Wow! 1.21 Giggawats is enough to power the time traveling DeLorean. Now we just need to find that flux capacitor.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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StupidPeasant
98 Comments
how far we have come
Manhattan Beach CA, USA had a wave generator in 1901. The Center Street pier was known as "Old Iron Pier" and supported a wave motor to generate power for the Strand lighting system. Purportedly, part of the wave motor lies buried in the sands at the shore end of the present pier.
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Gaetano Marano
246 Comments
>>> but the medium-high altitude winds are better >>>
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but the medium-high altitude winds are BETTER as suggested in this article:
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/028energy.html
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