Wave Powered Generator to Power Homes

Eh-Wire writes "A Scottish company, Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) and it's Norwegian backer, Norsk hydro are set install three wave powered generators 3.5 miles off the north coast of Portugal for the Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis. This will be the world's first commercial wave powered generating system. Providing the initial three generators perform as expected, an additional thirty wave powered generators will be installed by the end of 2006. It's estimated the wave powered generator farm will displace 6000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted from conventional electrical generating plants."

In Mexico..

[Kinky Bass Junk (880011)]

... a similar system was in place, however the locals misinterpreted it and put it in the middle of a football field.

Wave hello

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/354882 0.stm [bbc.co.uk] ive read a few other reports on the matter, At the current rate of progression it was noted that we would only have 10% of the power from renewable energy by 2020, However i have read a few reports that were speculating that wave generators set up around Scotland could provide 20-25% of Europes power needs.
If this is so , then it would definantly be a great source of commerce for the region.
Not to mention the positive effect on the enviroment ,.
Yet this will be stiffeld at every turn by the conglomerats who make a fair bit out of natural resource based fuels .

In the region of Germany i am currently , i belive a large percentage of the enegry is derived from wind power(a commen sight when driving around here are collections of wind turbines) , If other countrys were to take on schemes such as these we could cut emmison levels by massive ammounts.
This wont hapen though , as oil(coal gas etc) is money and money is power , so untill the well drys up there will be little done about it , bar experiments.

Re:Wave hello

[/ASCII (86998)]

Yay, another conspiracy theory, this time from someone with the nick FidelCatsro... I think I can guess who's KoolAid you've been sipping.

These 'conglomerats' you talk of are just regular corporations, no more scary than Microsoft. Like Microsoft they play rough and they break laws if the incentive is high enough, but if wave energy ever gets to the point where it is an economically sound investment, it _will_ get used. No amount of FUD from the 'evil' Arab oil conglomerat or the 'evil' US oil companies ca

Re:Wave hello

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

Actualy in germany in 2004 it was roughly 9.4% of the power consumed was garnerd from wind power
http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?link id=39367 [climateark.org]
Its not a conspiracy theory its a fact of the matter , It will be replaced eventualy but right now too many jobs and natural resource earnings would be at stake for countrys to consider ditching it right now

Conglomorates its the right word though (A corporation made up of a number of different companies that operate in diversified fields.) most of them do have stakes in several sectors ,if you look into the various fields companys such as shell , BP and Texaco operate ..

Re:Wave hello

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

To back that up a little , I lived most of my life in Aberdeen Scotland which is the Oil captiol of Europe, a hell of alot of jobs around the region are intertwined with the oil rigging industry and the other sectors of the oil field.
If Aberdeen were to lose those jobs instantly it would be a massive blow and the same for many other areas and regions throught the world , we can't simply just switch from oil and natural fosil fuels , it needs to be slowly introduced to build up the new industrys or we could be see wide spread global reccesions for a number of years , as oil brings in a hell of alot of money

Re:Wave hello

[/ASCII (86998)]

And why on earth _should_ we kill the oil industry overnight when a better source of energy arrives? The investment in the infrastructure is already made, both money-wise and environment-wise. Not only would it be economically unsound to just throw away billions worth of investments in oil infrastructure, it would be a major blow to the environment, since building enough wave powered power plants to supply the world with all the power we nned would be very taxing for the environment. The best solution both

Re:Wave hello

[/ASCII (86998)]

I'm sorry, but I find your post very funny. You link to a site that contradicts your own statments. Not only does the site you link to state that the number is 9.3%, not 'roughly 9.4%' (While this is a minor difference, it just goes to show how cerfully you read things), that number is the percentage of energy from 'Wind, hydro and other renewable plants'. According to the poster right above you, you are off by nearly a factor of two. In computer science this may not be much, but in economy, an error facto

Re:Wave hello

[/ASCII (86998)]

If Germany is one of the larger producers of wind power, then I guess 6.5% sounds possible. And still that's barely more than a drop in the ocean. I highly doubt that wind power is the future.

Re:Wave hello

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

And the Oil crissis will hit sooner or later(unless we develop a way of creating natural oil cost effectivly,)
We really need to be focusing on natural renewable energy sources and things like fission and fusion power .
People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly ,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.
If Nuclear power had not been stiffeld by protestors and irational worrys then the chances are today we would have nuclear as a far far safer and more productive power source.
Alot of the FUD talk most likely comes not from groups like green.peace but from the oil barons who have far mroe intrest in keeping these things at bay

Re:Wave hello

[/ASCII (86998)]

Given that most people know someone who died of cancer, and given that pollution from coal/gas/oil powered power plants is one of the large contributors to cancer, I find it surprising that people take the FUD about the dangers of nuclear power from orginizations like Greenpeace at face value. Yes, nuclear power kills people, but far, far, fewer people die for one kWh of nuclear power than from one kWh of coal power

Re:Wave hello

[BigDogCH (760290)]

Decent point, however the problem I see is that everyone is looking at the cost of PRODUCING a set amount of electricity. That is irrelevent. You need to look at the total cost of production and DISPOSAL. The cost of disposal from a Nuclear plant is hudreds of times higher than the cost of disposal from a coal plant. Some could even argue that disposal costs are INFINITE! There are other options other than nuclear. Coal isn't perfect either, but just like nuclear, new coal plants could be built clean.

A few years back, 3m designed (I believe it was 3m) a filter for coal emmissions to remove ALL harmful materials from the emissions. 100%. The problem was cost. I believe one of the main materials was crushed diamond or something like that. Good Ol' W decided that they shouldn't be required, and funding shouldn't be spent on development and requirement of such filtering systems. So, should we blame the cancer rates on the coal plants, then build nuclear, or simply look to who is to blame for these emissions.

Does anyone know anything about these filters? I didn't find a reference in a quick search, and I'm not crazy.......well maybe.

Another fission expedition? Lets stay on the wave

[dbIII (701233)]

Electricity was mentioned, so we get:

People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly

And now for some rewriting of history:

If Nuclear power had not been stiffeld by protestors

Hmm, Jimmy Carter nuclear protester - not Jimmy Carter former nuclear engineer as reality will have it. Next the coal ash is nuclear waste too troll will emerge, despite coal having nothing to do with this.

Back to wave power - this unit may not generate as much electricity as three mile i

Re:Another fission expedition? Lets stay on the wa

[dbIII (701233)]

"If Nuclear power had not been stiffeld by protestors"

That is true if a bit UK centric

Now lets see if I get you right - you see Thatcher as caving in to protestors and not as an economic rationalist who cancelled construction of a bloody expensive plant and told British Nuclear Fuels to stop coming and begging for money?

I don't live in the UK, but that sounds like a different Thatcher to how she appeared in the international press.

Re:Wave hello

[Peden (753161)]

Please be aware the amount of oil it takes to process the uranium ore from the rocks. This is a huge amount! On top of that, uranium is just like oil, there is only so much of it. Wave energy is a good idea, but some research should be put into how this affects the seas. Granted there is a lot of energy in there, but taking some out would probably have some effect?

Re:Wave hello

[doktoromni (839179)]

Comparing the energy contained in known Uranium reserves to the energy contained in the known oil reserves is much like comparing a matchstick to a forest fire. Fissile materials could last for *billions* of years [stanford.edu] [www-formal.stanford.edu], and so fissiles should also be considered a renewable energy source as the sun - and this is taking into account an yearly energy consumption rate 25 times higher than present, more than if the whole world was as energy-hungry as the developed countries.

coal vs. nuclear fatalities

[whitis (310873)]

People don't like nuclear power because of incidents like three mile island and Chernobly ,yet more damage is done each year by the cumulitive effects of coal/gas and oil plants.

I read somewhere that more people die in coal mines in russia every year than the total death toll (including long term cancer deaths) from chernobyl. And chernobyl was a crappy design that would not be allowed in the US. Cancer death estimates vary considerably, however. Additional eurasian cancer deaths would have to be c

Re:WHAT?!?

[/ASCII (86998)]

That grass looks pretty green [kiddofspeed.com] to me...

Just because humans can't live there without getting cancer doesn't mean that other life forms aren't able to.

Re:WHAT?!?

[dabigpaybackski (772131)]

Shit, I'm too tired to get wordy, so I'll just leave it at this: Chernobyl's RBMK reactor is a shoddy and primitive design that is as about as different from a modern design as a Univac mainframe is from the computer you're sitting in front of.

Do some actual reading about engineering and nuclear physics instead of making nonsensical statements about controlled bomb-blasts.

Re:WHAT?!?

[dbIII (701233)]

Chernobyl made it really difficult to get people to accept the building of new and more secure reactor plants to relieve and eventually replace the old, shoddy ones.

Simply because it was never supposed to happen according the the "clean" "green" and "safe" rant. Once you lose the trust of people it is very hard to get it back.

Re:Wave hello

[ProfaneBaby (821276)]

Absolute nonsense.

Many states in the US have the same sort of renewable energy goals as countries in Europe. It's not, though, something that needs to be regulated by the Federal Government which - for the most part - lets states manage their own energy needs and supplies.

17 states have laws/plans to migrate towards renewable energy, including the largest (California, 20% by 2010), and the Federal government offers a tax credit to companies that use wind for energy needs (which is the Federal government's

renewable energy sources

[xonen (774419)]

The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.

i did not know that fact, thought it was 8%-10%, but it's a good goal, although i doubt it will be reached. there is lot of opposition to 'conventional' methods of renewable energy, like wind energy.
here in holland (a windy place) people think they're ugly, noisy and potentionally dangerous. and the same environmental groups that dislikes carbondioxide and nuclear energy als dislike the fact birds may fly into those things. for long time, people have suggested off-shore solutions, like off-shore windmill parks.. but they're expensive.
so, i find it aprticulair interesting that a country like portughal pioneers in those steps, instead of 'hi-tec' countries like holland, germany or france.
guess it's just a matter of oil prices to raise more, so alternative power sources automatically gets economical benefits. after all, the techniques are there, short-view economics and lack of vision is keeping those from being implemented.

Re:renewable energy sources

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

The enviromental extremest(I am very much an enviromentalist , but am pragmatic about it) will find any reason to complain , we have heaps of them here in Germany , I often drive past them (well im a passenger) And have never once seen a dead bird laying around at the bottom of them , they are hardly noisy atall and generaly not that much of an eye sore(i kind of like them ).
Its rather insulting to the inteligence of birds , i have yet to see one study that can confirm birds would be that prone to flying into them , People seem to prefer irrational fear to logic .

Re:renewable energy sources

[ProfaneBaby (821276)]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-win dmills-usat_x.htm [usatoday.com]

After years of study but little progress reducing bird kills, environmentalists have sued to force turbine owners to take tough corrective measures. The companies, at risk of federal prosecution, say they see the need to protect birds. "Once we finally realized that this issue was really serious, that we had to solve it to move forward, we got religion," says George Hardie, president of G3 Energy.

The size of the annual body count -- conservatively put at 4,700 birds -- is unique to this sprawling, 50-square-mile site in the Diablo Mountains between San Francisco and the agricultural Central Valley because it spans an international migratory bird route regulated by the federal government. The low mountains are home to the world's highest density of nesting golden eagles.

It certainly seems to be a limited problem. The question, then, is whether or not you can find a safe alternative, or if you define an 'accepted' loss and work to stay within that realm.

In California (which also has a 20% by 2010 law), these wind turbines are going up ALL OVER - especially in a lot of the passes leading from the coastal valleys into the inner valleys. Some of the windier passes happen to be the same passes that birds use for migration, which is causing a lot of the complaints. Not all of the passes are on migration routes - the corridor along I-10 through Palm Springs has one of the largest installations, and hasn't been subject to many complaints at all, as the number of birds (population density, I suppose) in that area isn't nearly as high as in the coastal regions.

Re:renewable energy sources

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

I like to look at it in a darwinian sense , if these birds are stupid enough to fly into wind turbines then perhaps its natural selection.Though even then it is a very minor risk of it happening atall , unless as you say they are planted in migration routes.
Then that is perhaps a little cruel , they will need to devise some form of scare-crow to ward off the birds.
ofcourse they will need to do it without making the plants eye-sores and making them confusing to air crafts in the dark (a line of these with f

Re:renewable energy sources

[mattyrobinson69 (751521)]

The light on landing strips is a specific colour, just as the lights on parts of planes are different colours (i cant remember which color for which part though)

all this would need is a colour which is not used by anything else (blue??).

Re:renewable energy sources

[xonen (774419)]

It may be measured and calculated how many birds got killed by those things.

But at the same time, we forget to calculate the number of animals getting killed by not doing so. Climate changes already lead to the extinsion of several species, the petrochemical industry is far from being environmental friendly. All kinds of indirect effects are not calculated, 'just' to safe a few hundred birds.
And, if animals aren't important enough (...) in holland it is calculated that fine dust, mainly from traffic, r

Cat power?

[wytcld (179112)]

Domestic cats kill millions of birds annually. Windows kill many thousands of birds who fly into them. Animal-loving environmentalists often keep cats, and live in dwellings with windows, so they can gaze out at their beloved nature. Homes without windows would be more energy-efficient. Perhaps we can harness cats for energy, but they sleep 16 hours a day.

Cats will do fine

[xant (99438)]

You just burn them, like any fuel source. ;-)

Re:renewable energy sources

[Tim C (15259)]

The enviromental extremest... will find any reason to complain , we have heaps of them here in Germany , I often drive past them. And have never once seen a dead bird laying around at the bottom of them , they are hardly noisy atall and generaly not that much of an eye sore

Oh I don't know, the really extreme ones can be pretty vocal and I've known a few that weren't exactly pleasing on the eye. They don't generally kill very many birds though, I'll give you that...

Re:renewable energy sources

[nietsch (112711)]

What people her (holland) think about windmills may have little to do with reality. Because windfarms have to be huge, they are visible. Most people perfer to think of the countryside as 'unspoilt nature' although there is no nartural piece of wilderness left in the netherlands. (don't point at all the little pieces of nature reserves here and there: if you need someone to maintain it, and it was created a few decades ago, it is a garden, not 'wilderness'). Everything else is manmade too, but windfarms stan

Plus ca change

[kiore (734594)]

The artificial power sources that led to the first wave (no pun intended) of industralisation were water power ... in the form of mills driven by waterwheels trapping river power.

Then we had steam, and burned fossil fuels to make it. Tearing up the ground, polluting the air, the water, and eventually damaging our whole world.

Finally we return to extracting energy from water. No compaints from me on that score.

Re:Plus ca change

[FidelCatsro (861135)]

http://www.industcards.com/hydro-scotland.htm [industcards.com]
Hydro has been one of the main sources of power in scotland since 1930s (some really wonderfull damms with great architecture) , I used to visit them alot when i was younger , a real majesty about them.
the planet is mostly water anyway and with the power of tides and gravity , if we put effort into it i am fairly sure we could get nearly all of our energy needs from water . only problem is that their is little money to get out of it compared to drilling for oil.

More details and animation

[oren (78897)]

Are available at the company's site [oceanpd.com]. Flash animation of how the system works can be found here [oceanpd.com].

From their site:

A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh.

And:

The 750kw full-scale prototype is 120m long and 3.5m in diameter...

So this isn't very different from the power density of, say, wind turbines. It has the advantage that you can locate the 40,000 12m long 3.5m diameter devices - not to mention X00,000 anchoring cables - out of sight in the ocean, instead on the top of ridges where they stick out like sore thumbs and chop the occasional bird migration.

Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way. With that amount, people will start complaining. Also, their site gives no estimation of cost per kw. A salt ocean with high waves is a very machine-hostile environment, so these devices will have a very finite life time, and at the sizes they give, they are anything but cheap.

So while this is very clever, and nice, it doesn't get us off the hook for a sustainable energy source. Floating nuclear plants, now - that's a thought. Its the ultimate in "not in my back yard". :-)

Re:More details and animation

[liam193 (571414)]

Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way. With that amount, people will start complaining. Also, their site gives no estimation of cost per kw. A salt ocean with high waves is a very machine-hostile environment, so these devices will have a very finite life time, and at the sizes they give, they are anything but cheap.

It looks like you where headed down the same direction I was when I first read this. Please someone tell me I'm missing something here be

Re:More details and animation

[Rakshasa Taisab (244699)]

There's one problem with your calculation, it assumes the cost of mass produced units is the same as the prototypes.

Re:More details and animation

[Tim C (15259)]

Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way.

So don't try to produce it all using this, just produce some of it.

Anything that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, even a little, has to be a good thing.

Re:More details and animation

[Tim C (15259)]

I take it you're just as worried about nuclear powered submarines then? I appreciate that there's a difference in scale, and I'm not saying you're not right to be concerned...

How it works

[dos_dude (521098)]

A little more detail about how that stuff works wouldn't have hurt in that story.

Ocean Power Delivery Limited has a website [oceanpd.com]! And they have a nice little Flash animation that explains those sausages [oceanpd.com].

An alternative to tidal power?

[rduke15 (721841)]

Might be an interesting alternative to tidal power [wikipedia.org], when tides are not strong enough. But I couldn't find much technical information on it.

As for tidal power itself, maybe it's worth noting here that it has been in use for quite some time, even though at only few places. The largest is the 240 Megawatts plant in La Rance in France [strath.ac.uk].

In Northern Ameria, there is The Annapolis Tidal Generating Station [annapolisbasin.com].

M'y, you'r, hi's, her's, it's... you know?

[Dolda2000 (759023)]

A Scottish company, Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) and it's Norwegian backer

Editor's: Im glad to see that youre capable of correcting the posters use of apostrophe's. Its too much to assume that the poster's would get thei'r grammars right anyway.

environmental impact

[Senor_Programmer (876714)]

anything one does to extract energy affects the environment. wind farms and nuclear plants change local micro-climates. i'm curious as to what, if any modeling has been done for 'sausage' farms.

as an aside, these things are certain to confuse and confound first time extra-solar visitors.

EU is proceeding, along with Japan, with a test bed for materials to be used in nuclear fusion reactor, if they ever sort out where it's gonna go. In the mean time, IMO, the best thing that could happen for 'clean' power would be a global standard fission plant along with a set of standards for site requirements. Cookie cutter fission plants would make nuclear power much more affordable. As for nuclear waste, IMO it's pretty arrogant to think we'll be around 50k years from now, while at the same time not being clever enough to figure out how to handle the waste by the time the 50k year countdown ends...

Re:environmental impact

[Cochonou (576531)]

I think it's pretty arrogant to think that "we'll always come up with a solution later. We're clever enough".

Re:environmental impact

[dbIII (701233)]

IMO, the best thing that could happen for 'clean' power would be a global standard fission plant

We've still got a long way to go before that will be possible - maybe pebble bed will be cheap enough?

Fission is still a very expensive way to boil water, and in most cases is just there as the peaceful side of the bomb. There are exceptions, Japan has it as insurance against losing their imported supply of coal and oil, and pebble bed may just be the first nuclear technology that will be cost effective vs fo

Cool finally the royal family can contribute

[Timesprout (579035)]

They are always waving. The Queens waves are a bit feeble though, dunno if I would want her powering the electric shower in the morning.

Bay of Fundy

[pipingguy (566974)]

That reminds me; why is tidal power not more widely used? Building islands [nationmaster.com] is expensive but if the long term results are positive, why not?

North coast?

[teh kurisu (701097)]

This had me checking the calendar to see if it was the 1st of April, and then a map to confirm my suspicions (and check that nothing had changed drastically since the last time I looked).

I believe I'm correct in stating that Portugal doesn't actually have a North coast.

Surfing point of view

[blakestah (91866)]

These pods are a little under 500 feet long. That means they will be selective for some period of waves energy, with a peak in the 13-14 second wave period band (see wavelength chart at http://www.blakestah.com/surf/oldprediction.html [blakestah.com]). It will also have limited response at fundamentals - longer wavelengths - because these sausages are linked.

There's a problem in this. First of all, the little crappy windchop that surfers hate is in the short period bands, 5-8 seconds or so. And these pods will not suck off any of that energy - the chop will go right on through. Whereas the surfable energy - the long period stuff, will be knocked down substantially. Not good. Also, the bulk of the ocean's wave energy is in this chop. So they are throwing out the baby to drink the bathwater.

They need to redesign it to not have any selectivity for periods over 10 seconds - or wavelengths over 100 meters. Take the bulk of the energy, sap it out, and make the oceans smooth and glassy while the long period waves cruise on through and generate stoke for surfers worldwide.

The pod design is really cool. There are a few things they could do to gear it up also - like load the bulk of the weight and volume at the links to maximize leverage, and broaden the aspect ratio closer to 0.5...I'm envisioning links 10m long and 5m wide with never more than 5 connected serially. That saps the oceans of the wind chop, while leaving the longer period surf (which is more rare anyway) alone. Smaller, easier to deploy (and replace) units, which a physical design using more leverage. And surfing would actually benefit from such a change.

Re:How much CO2 is really saved?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wait, let me see if I am understanding you correctly.

You are trying to say that the process of building a machine ONCE will generate way more CO2 than a CONTINUING, NEVER-ENDING process of making power?

Are you trolling?

Re:How much CO2 is really saved?

[DrXym (126579)]

If its comparable to the many thousands of tons of carbon dioxide emitted when building coal / wood power plants, the question is irrelevant.

Re:It's

[Ochu (877326)]

Ah, well now, here you have broken one of the key rules of /. In order to be a grammar Nazi, you have to either deliver a long and carefully written piece of prose detailing how and why the editors makde a mistake, and providing helpful tips for anyone else who is confused, or be horribly sarcastic b'y makin'g t'he mis'take aga'in and aga'in. Calling them fuckos just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.