Giant Snake-Shaped Generators Could Capture Wave Power 432
Roland Piquepaille writes "UK researchers have developed a prototype of a future giant rubber tube which could catch energy from sea waves. The device, dubbed Anaconda, uses 'long sea waves to excite bulge waves which travel along the wall of a submersed rubber tube. These are then converted into flows of water passing through a turbine to generate electricity.' So far, the experiments have been done with tubes with diameters of 0.25 and 0.5 meters. But if the experiments are successful, future full-scale Anaconda devices would be 200 meters long and 7 meters in diameter, and deployed in water depths of between 40 and 100 meters. An Anaconda would deliver an output power of 1MW (enough to power 2,000 houses). These devices would be deployed in groups of 20 or even more providing cheap electricity without harming our environment."
say that again? (Score:5, Funny)
'long sea waves to excite bulge waves which travel along the wall of a submersed rubber tube. These are then converted into flows of water passing through a turbine to generate electricity.'
and called the anaconda?
i don't know if this scheme will work, but hands down, that is the most sexual innuendo i've heard in an energy generation scheme in a long time
Baby got back (Score:3, Funny)
and called the anaconda?
My anaconda don't want none
Unless you've got buns, hon
Re:Baby got back (Score:5, Funny)
I say, let them do all the side bends and situps they want, since the calories expending in diminishing that rump will surely guide us into a new era of plentiful energy for all.
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You don't get out much do you?
The GP post was clearly a joke.
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This technology maybe something which could be useful unlike the useless technologies of the past such as solar which cost too much and don't produce enough.
200 meters long.
7 meters wide.
1 million watts.
2000 homes.
Totally unpredicted environmental impacts as we begin to take energy from the sea currents (did you really think energy came from nowhere?) and claim it has no effect on the real world, like a bunch of ninnies.
Lemme point out we need about 500GW of power constantly to run this place, so 500,000 of these, 100,000,000 km of rubber tubes, more tubes than the internet.
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Actually, lots (perhaps all) of the sea currents have had their energies cranked up by the Greenhouse effect. Huge rivers of currents have been shoved away from their past courses, driven into more twists and turns, becoming more energetic as energy is stored in them. That energy also comes out, and contributes to effects like El Nino and other storm generation, like heated surfaces that encourage hurricane formation.
Taking energy out of those currents could be a double benefit. Getting the energy instead o
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Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, the sky-high price for oil is useful in reminding us that there are limits to our resources. If we do not make a conscientious effort to control population growth, then nature will impose a solution on us. That solution will be poverty and likely starvation. If you doubt what I say, consider the huge amounts of energy that is needed to grow and to transport food.
Right now, I suspect that our population is unsustainably large due to the fact that we still have plentiful supplies of non-renewable sources (e.g., oil and uranium). So, our energy consumption = (1) usuable energy from non-renewable sources + (2) usuable energy from renewable sources. After #1 is depleted by roughly 2100 (?), a global world war for resources will dwarf the calamity of World War II. (By the way, we will deplete our mineral resources like copper and iron ore long before we deplete our non-renewable sources of energy.)
Will humankind wake up to the problem of overpopulation? In the USA, political correctness prevents us from dealing with the problem. The American mantra is that (1) expanding the population is always wonderful and (2) expanding the population by immigration is the best route.
renewables are boutique (Score:5, Insightful)
just go nuclear and conserve
going nuclear should give us enough time to figure out fusion. and if we don't, it's curtains
but renewables: geothermal, wind, tidal, etc... it's all tiny fractions of demand
except for solar. but that's a huge infrastructure outlay
nuclear is the best option before us to kick our hydrocarbon habit
Re:renewables are boutique (Score:5, Funny)
Going nuclear would probably also help deal with that pesky overpopulation problem the GP was going on about.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again; why pick one? The best solution is a combined solution in a small footprint. Each home providing some portion of it's own power through solar, wind, geothermal, or some combination of them all.
Doing it that way won't require any huge infrastructure, it will drastically reduce hydrocarbon dependence, and it will reduce costs drastically on any one of the technologies listed.
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The point is, on a personal level, efficiency doesn't really need to be that high. You can lose efficiency because you don't have to pipe the power long distances. You can lose efficiency because you can adjust your personal consumption to accommodate it. Most importantly, you can grow your system as your needs change.
Act locally and all that. It doesn't have to solve the world's power needs, it has to solve an individual's power needs. An individual doesn't give a shit about have high efficiency, just
Nukes Are Dead Ends (Score:3, Insightful)
On top of all the other problems with nukes (like dirty extraction that's dependent on an even tinier resource that's in even more unstable countries than oil is), we are now likely facing the rapid exhaustion of elements like indium and hafnium that are necessary for reactor control rods.
Nukes are a hugely top-heavy tech. That produce a huge problem in their waste, as well as extremely difficult security problems.
Geothermal is vastly more energy than even all the nukes we could produce. Other renewables ca
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
While solar power in all forms is the only thing we know has a high probability of being around in a billion years, nuclear power will last us, at the least, 300 years. Even the pessimists can agree that we'll have nuclear fusion within 200 years. So thats it! nuclear fusion until nuclear fission is sorted out. All of man's energy needs in a simple two step plan!
poverty! global war! starvation! calamity! our population is unsustainable!
will you please stop mongering fear and get realistic!? And don't event start with the "nuclear waste" blather because nuclear power can safely generate enough energy to make chemicals to launch all waste into the sun and have all the energy we'll need left over!
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Will you please stop with this "nuclear waste" blather? "Nuclear waste" is just "nuclear fuel that we're too lame to recycle yet".
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Informative)
It would take a huge investment in infrastructure to be able to "use up" nuclear material to the state where it is reasonably harmless to life. By comparison, increasing renewable energy generation can be done in a fairly incremental fashion (and can be moved & removed in a fairly incremental fashion as well).
Also, "nuclear waste" doesn't just include the nuclear fuel. It also includes everything which comes in contact with that nuclear fuel & all of ways that it is processed (like the containers used to store/transport the fuel, the reactor walls, the control rod mechanisms, etc). Almost all that material can't be safely used once it has become contaminated, the stuff that it is contaminated with can't be easily extracted for use as fuel, and it is all still hazardous to life.
I'm not saying that nuclear isn't theoretically a great source of energy, but you're seriously downplaying some of its disadvantages.
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And don't event start with the "nuclear waste" blather because nuclear power can safely generate enough energy to make chemicals to launch all waste into the sun and have all the energy we'll need left over!
Or we could do something smart and bury it in an area where it'll sink into the mantle. There's spots where anything more than 10 miles down slowly sinks and in about 5 years falls below the crust of the earth; melted nuclear waste is heavy, it sinks. It's no longer a problem at that point.
Expelling high energy matter into space is a bad idea, we lose the thermal energy from this planet that way, and thus local sustainability goes down.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:4, Interesting)
The American mantra is that (1) expanding the population is always wonderful and (2) expanding the population by immigration is the best route.
Hmmm, is that why the population density in the US is so much lower [wikipedia.org] than in most of the rest of the world? Wait, I'm confused.
I'd say that most likely, we're best off pursuing fusion power with all the resources we have at our disposal. In the end, solar power is the same thing, hydrogen fusion. But the difference is, we can (in principle) get much more power out of fusing terrestrial hydrogen ourselves than the total incoming flux from the sun. We won't run out of terrestrial hydrogen for plenty long enough that we'll be able to build something approaching a Dyson sphere in time to keep our available power on a steady rise.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Funny)
Oh I dont know, I seem to find the US population extremely dense, I mean they voted for Bush.....
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that most likely, we're best off pursuing fusion power...
Hear hear. I doubt if we'll get the power density we need in the long run with anything less. Nothing like good ol' Mother Nature at her best.
In the mean time, there will be a large and diverse effort to lessen the dependency on imported sweet crude, most likely depending on what you have available -- wave power for the North Sea, perhaps, broad acreage solar here in Australia, manufactured fuels from coal, nuclear-manufactured ammonia chemistry and similar sources elsewhere. Stopgap solutions until then will need to match the local geography, physical and political climate. They'll probably all be represented.
In addition we'll need to exploit any energy differential we can tap as well, such as wave motion, any sort of temperature differential such as geothermal, oceanic wells, etc. Any place that's much colder or warmer than another place nearby is a candidate for a Stirling engine to tap into it.
On top of that, we'll simply need to throw less energy away, and we're all working on that.
By the time we run out of all the energy available to us, we'll all be somewhere else and the sun will be a brown dwarf surrounded by a photo opportunity.
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In the game of capitalism, money is your score. This is unfortunate. As such, it's necessary for one to come by money, a metaphor for one's own worth, by some means in order to survive. As hard as
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While fusion is great, it shouldn't be our only goal. This is still a non-renewable fuel. Hydrogen is an important ingredient to life, use up all the hydrogen and everything will die.
Also, fission produces some terrible byproducts with effectively infinite lifetimes. One really bad accident could destroy the entire planet. One failed rocket exploding in the atmosphere and we all die. So blasting the waste into the Sun isn't the miraculous cure-all supporters claim. Reprocessing has proven to be not "cost-ef
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After #1 is depleted by roughly 2100 (?), a global world war for resources will dwarf the calamity of World War II.
Sounds more like the plot for a bad movie than a realistic expectation of future events.
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The main
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Interesting)
Now take the remaining farmland in the US, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Don't convert an acre of forest, park, or city. No mountains, or prairies. Only the existing farmland. You can grow enough food for everyone (via a vegetarian diet).
Now take the fresh water outflow of the Columbia river - the river separating Washington from Oregon. You've got 27 gallons of fresh water per person per day.
Now put 700 nuclear plants in the deserts of Nevada. You have enough power for everyone to live at the energy consumption level of the US.
Go do the research, you'll see this all to be true. We could support every single person on the face of the earth within 40% of the North American continent. No one on any other continent, island, or waterway.
There aren't too many people; the issue is distribution of the resources. That is a political - not scientific - problem. We could feed the world and provide fresh water for everyone, if we could get countries to agree.
And note that it is almost always the country that would benefit that restricts the offer of aid. Think Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Turkmenistan, North Korea. Those countries are stricken with poverty because of the G8 or the first world; they are stricken because twisted, maniacal leaders are power-drunk.
Overpopulated? Not by a long shot. Poor distribution? Sure. The solution is to encourage free and expanded trade - and in some cases like Zimbabwe and Myanmar - a few well placed bullets. Economic growth is required to free more people.
And when there's more people with freedom and no longer having to worry about their next meal, or their next drink of water, you'll find a lot more participation in solving other big problems facing the world.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Zimbabwe's a particularly good example; they once had a fairly decent country. Grew enough food for themselves and enough to export to other starving African countries.
Let's solve that, seize all the farms, hand them to people who don't know a damned thing about farming or owning a business, let them rip up the irrigation and sell it as scrap metal and boom! you've got a few people making a lot of money, one time, rather than a good bit year by year, and instead of a fed populous exporting food you've got a starving populous begging to import food.
I'd wager that Zimbabwe ALONE is more responsible for increased demand on global food supplies than biofuels.. so stop cryin about *that*.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Informative)
There aren't too many people; the issue is distribution of the resources. That is a political - not scientific - problem. We could feed the world and provide fresh water for everyone, if we could get countries to agree.
I see. Political Science... isn't?
And if you think that moving everybody to Texas and getting the water from Oregon down to Texas and building 700 nukular power plants is a POLITICAL problem, you have a gross misestimation of reality.
Yes, politics plays a key role in wealth inequity, but this is also a severe issue of engineering and resource management.
Yes, in a purely mathematical world, you could move everybody to Texas, and water then with just the water from XYZ river. But how do you distribute those 26 gallons of water per day? Can you imagine how much plumbing and energy it would take to distribute that kind of water? How many millions of miles of piping to lay?
How many trees it would take to build those kinds of houses, roads to transport the trees, mills to process the trees...
That's the problem with overly simplistic models that simply divide the number of people by XYZ (usually Texas) and figure that's the problem.
The truth is that if you were born in the United States, you inherited almost a MILLION DOLLARS of wealth at current market value in public infrastructure: roads, power lines, schools, libraries, police buildings, fire equipment, telecommunications capabilities, rail lines, and so on, all of which give you the ability to do some small piece and earn (on average) about 7% on your public "net worth" as personal income.
That's how come it's so much harder to become wealthy in the 3rd world - the infrastructure needed to support the widespread creation of wealth simply doesn't exist.
I digress.
So you have a city with a population density that at least compares to most cities, the size of Texas. Can you imagine what the quality of life would be like near Killeen? (the middle)
People live where the resources are available, where distribution is cheap to free, where the quality of life is something to enjoy. I like being able to walk through a park that isn't packed every 10 feet with another person. The feeling of isolation, the curiosity at watching a water snake swim.
I agree with your general conclusion, that the problem is largely political, and that the 3rd world could become much happier with effective leadership. But I don't like that you use such overly simplistic models to support your conclusion!
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Hey, I have any idea; instead of being a troll who attacks people who have a differing view point, how about you engage in a real discussion. "You stubbornly cling to your imaged notions...", that is what is known as an appeal to ridicule, there is no real argument here. As is, "Frankly, you're the who doesn't care about Earth's disadvantages humans"; you have no evidence for this statement from the discussion above and it only adds to discredit you more. I'm not taking a side in the debate as I am not e
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] US electricity consuption per capita (2005 figures) works out to 12.8 MWh/year.
Multiply that by 6.5 billion people gives 83.2 billion MWh/year.
The US's 103 nuclear reactors' highest ever output [planetark.org] (2004) was 788.5 million MWh.
Put the numbers together and you find you need around 10,900 nuclear reactors working at the average output for a US nuclear power stations.
Were every one of those stations to be the same design as the world's largest nuclear power station [leonardo-energy.org] (which actually consists of 7 operating units) you'd still need 1150 of the things to match US power consumption rates.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that in my post I noted we could supply ALL our energy needs with nuclear. No need for crude oil for basically none of our energy requirements.
Oil was a cheap and high density power source; in the 1800s we used it because nuclear wasn't an option. Now we can use nuclear for most power needs, and use petroleum for whatever else (like plastics, high-density requirements like airplanes, etc).
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The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Consider that the US is the most open economy in the world. And that the poor in the US are much better off than the middle class or rich in most of the world. And yes, I have been to most of the world (well, 94 countries so far).
While some people will gain hugely in a free market, even the bottom end ga
Who knows whether communism would really work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, it does. I think Sir Winston Churchill explained it best:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Yes, because if a British conservative politician said it in the middle of the last century, it must be true today. Just because the first half of the quote is undeniably true, doesn't make the second part true as well.
To Churchill looking at Stalinism, which was about all there was to go on then, it must have seemed that socialism inevitably led to misery, but with hindsight the "socialisms" of the 20th Century were no such thing. In fact, the "equal sharing of miseries" part is demonstrably false even as
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The evidence of the USSR and China and Vietnam show it to be true. Communism simply doesn't work. Why else would the USSR have collapsed economically, or China and Vietnam moved quickly (and continuously) towards a more free-market economy?
Western economies in the early 21st century ar
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you completely missed the point: the GP stated we were overpopulated, when demonstrably that is false. If you can support every single person in such a small area as Texas, and with the resources of just 40% of one continent, then how are we overpopulated? I guess that sailed right over your head...
I wasn't advocating moving everyone to Texas, merely pointing out that there isn't a population problem. Provably so. Unless you want to show otherwise? Clearly we have the resources to support everyone.
And if that is the case, then the fact that millions die each month from starvation must be because of some reason other than there are too many of them.
Take a look at Zimbabwe. 25 years ago, they were a net exporter of food, and starvation within Zimbabwe was unheard of. Jobs were plentiful. Education was free and open to all, and the country was quite peaceful.
Now? Zimbabwe can't even grow 20% of its own food. It's economy has been so wrecked that inflation is running at 10 MILLION percent annually. Prices double daily. Unless your wages increase at a higher rate - which they don't - you simply cannot survive.
How to solve problems like that? Well, you can try trade. It works for most places that give it a try. Grow the pie, everyone wins. But many places don't want or care for free trade and you get Myanmar, and Zimbabwe, and Haiti, and North Korea.
You want to solve those problems? You're not going to do it by talking. The rulers of those countries don't give a shit about the people. They are simply cattle to be used; in fact, in Haiti and Zimbabwe, cattle are worth more than people. I know, I've been to both.
So how to you negotiate with those bastards? They have everything they want. They have absolute control, they have air conditioned palaces, plenty to eat, and people to shoot and flay for sport. What can we offer them other than a restriction in what they do now?
You want to be humanitarian to the suffering people in those countries? You won't do it by providing food and money - that will just go to the thug running the place, guaranteed. You can support an insurgency, but that will take time, cost thousands - if not millions - of lives, and may not work.
Or you simply send in a few teams and in the course of a day or two eliminate the thugs. Eliminate the threat. Set up a government, and work to rebuild the country. It's worked every time we've tried it: Philippines, Japan, Germany, Iraq. Yes, Iraq.
You say I should grow up? I have, and I've been to those places. Ever run the pharmacy of a medical clinic in the hills around Dessalines, Haiti? Build water pumps in Kadoma, Zimbabwe? Distribute US Constitutions while teaching English in Hamheung, North Korea? Give out copies of the Declaration of Independence while teaching English in Dawei, Myanmar?
What's your solution? Sitting down and talking? How did the talking go with Myanmar's rulers - refused to allow all US, and most foreign, aid after the typhoon which killed 500,000.
How about talking with Saddam? Twelve years and still hadn't gotten anywhere - even talked for 5 years AFTER the US made regime change the official US policy. Of course, it didn't help that "pacifists" arguing for more dialogue - the UN, the French, the Germans, and the Russians - were skimming billions of dollars off their suggested "humanitarian" actions.
Speak softly and carry a big stick only works if you actually are willing to use the stick. If you're too squeamish for that, then I suggest you move over and let the grown ups actually do what needs to happen.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
.
As far as oil goes, the majority of Iraqi oil was controlled by BP and Shell until 1972 when Iraq nationalized oil. And then cut deals with France and Russia.
Note that BP is British Petroleum, a UK company. And Shell is Royal Dutch Shell, a Dutch company. The US had precious little stake in Iraq before 1972 or afterwards. And even the recent grants of oil rights saw US companies getting about 30% of the production leases.
The US has never been a major consumer of oil from Iraq. Nor has the US been a major consumer of oil from the Middle East; rather, most of the oil goes to Europe or Asia. The US still produces 45% of its own oil, and buys more from Canada than it does from the Middle East. We buy more from Venezuela and Mexico than we do from the Middle East.
If you want to say the war was about oil, then it was about the US ensuring a stable supply of oil for the EU, not for itself.
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deposing Saddam and his party is like the United States' "apology" to world politics. More like a guilty ass-covering. Do you know why we were so tight with Mr. Hussein (by we, I mean older George Bush and his political)?
It's because he ran Iraq as a secular republic. That's really the only reason. Iran was more "threatening" to certain persons and so the US became Saddam Hussein's PR machine.
I really don't think you can consider the federal
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
In the long run, the only readily available sources of energy are renewable sources: solar energy and terrestrial energy (e.g., wind and waves).
Almost all of the energy we use comes from the sun, with nuclear and geothermal being (the) exceptions. The main difference is whether we're using the energy as the sun is producing it (wind, wave, solar) or we're using energy that's been stored from previous eons of sunlight (coal, oil). So I agree with what you're saying insofar as we shouldn't be using more energy than the sun is giving us right now, and we should strive to make that come from the current energy output rather than stored output.
Right now, the sky-high price for oil is useful in reminding us that there are limits to our resources.
(By the way, we will deplete our mineral resources like copper and iron ore long before we deplete our non-renewable sources of energy.)
But I'm going to have to disagree with you here. We will never actually run out of copper or iron or oil. As the amount of these resources that is naturally occurring decreases, the price will rise to the point that: (A) It becomes cost-efficent to dig through landfills and recycle previously used resources, and (B) other materials that were previously too expensive for the application will now be cost-effective.
Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness, nuclear comes from *a* sun, just not ours.
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Each person consumes a minimum amount of energy to live
You cannot "consume" energy, you can only apply it to work, store it, or change its form. (following E=MC^2 all the while) If you're cold, it's much more convenient to light up a log than run in circles awhile. That's just withdrawing some of the stored energy. It moved to your body, and will eventually be radiated/conducted out to somewhere else, but it will never be consumed. Even if we set off an atomic bomb in the middle of the ocean, that ene
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i don't know if this scheme will work, but hands down, that is the most sexual innuendo i've heard in an energy generation scheme in a long time
You should have seen the write up in The Register (AKA Vulture Central) on this.
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Would you care to share the link?
Re:say that again? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't say we didn't warn you. [theregister.co.uk]
Re:say that again? (Score:4, Funny)
Go jack off and when you come back everything will sound normal again.
That's your solution to everything, isn't it?
Sounds interesting (Score:5, Funny)
I just want to see the boat captain who wanders unknowingly into a field of these things at night. Snakes on a boat!
Re:Sounds interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Well, if the boat captain finds himself at 40 to 100 meters depth, he has other things to worry about."
Snakes on a Submarine! Extended, Elongated Edition! Immensely Increased Inadvertent Innuendo! Alliterations Aplenty!! With a Thousand Elephants!!!
trawlers (Score:3, Interesting)
If the captain was elsewhere working and the trawler was on autopilot, snagging a field of those things in your nets would rip the rigging off completely and probably capsize the boat from the stern before he had time to react and reverse engines. Modern fishing boats are like big tractors, huge engines and big props designed to pull hard, and they will. As soon as they reach whatever big anchor point is there for the turbines, the bow will lift severely, then either the whole rigging will go or they sink,
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I know and understand that - but something that size for just 1MW seems a waste of engineering/manufacturing to me...
Like the guy in the study said - (which I'd REALLY like to find) - a(some) 40GW nuclear plant(s) is(are) a very hard system to match - although some wind/solar/tidal will help, it still makes sense to use the most efficient system, (and this doesn't sound like it - only 1MW per object) - (though linking to solar power in the sahara is still the best technical solution - the best 'political',
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For renewables, though, hydro or tidal (or wave) are the way to go, simply because of the energy potential and mechanical coupling you get from falling (or rising) water. A single dam - like the Grand Coulee dam [wikipedia.org] can do 6.8 GW of power generation. That's a LOT of 5 MW wind turbines, and you know exactly how much and when you can generate the power - you have the water stored up months or years i
One possible problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One possible problem (Score:4, Informative)
Looking at http://anacond.neuf.fr/ it doesn't look like it's supposed to be on the oceanfloor but sort of floating in the water. Besides the constant motion from which it's supposed to create the energy would likely keep the sand off aswell.
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A much better version of this article can be found on the New Scientist website:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn14258-giant-rubber-snake-could-be-the-future-of-wave-power.html?feedId=online-news_rss20 [newscientist.com]
The 'Anaconda' seems to float in the air and also have some sort of filter/covering to prevent marine life wandering into into b accident.
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A full-scale device should produce 1 megawatt - enough to power around 200 houses.
Which article is right? Is it 200 houses or 2000? Both sound wrong to me. 2000 is way to much, that would be .5kW per house (minus energy loss during transportation/transformations), but 200 sounds a little low unless everyone is plugging in a Prius at night.
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Re:One possible problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One possible problem (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VamSAbwgJKk [youtube.com]
It doesn't sit on the sea floor.
It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw this yesterday, and using nature to generate energy is absolutely right. Think outside the paradigm, generate energy everywhere, use less of it everywhere... this is the solution, no single answer will work, it takes all efforts and answers. Anywhere the universe creates energy, we should be able to harness and use it. This is the grail, holy or not, energy for nothing.... or close to that.
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This is the grail, holy or not, energy for nothing.... or close to that.
Except that this will cause extra megawatts of tidal drag on the earth from the moon, slowing our rotation more quickly, lengthening our days more quickly, and quite possibly contributing to global climate change in a slightly different way than the one that we are used to thinking about.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for alternative energy like this (even tidal). It'll likely help more than it hurts. Everything has a price, though.
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Yeah, uhm, listen. You moving around causes a slight drag on the moon. The incredibly minute change in distribution of the Earth's mass thanks to civilization has changed the orbit of the moon. Sending satellites and people into space has altered the rate of rotation of the Earth.
And yet, she still moves and we're all ok.
You've obviously never run the numbers on how many waves we'd have to stop, how much mass we'd have to move in order to affect the Earth or the Moon in a detrimental way.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Funny)
Would someone get those... (Score:5, Funny)
motherfucking snake generators on the motherfucking grid!
Better description (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like it's not snake oil on the surface, but I have no real knowledge of the field.
Re:Better description (Score:5, Informative)
Intercourse the penguins (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this underestimates the ability of someone, somewhere being able to find a problem with anything. Hydropower dams wild rivers. Windmills smack birds out of the air. Photovoltaics pave over entire deserts. Probably Anacondas will interfere with the lifecycle of some species or other. One day we'll realize that any energy system is going to have some ill effects and say, "Intercourse the penguins, I need to microwave my popcorn."
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:5, Insightful)
Windmills smack birds out of the air.
To be fair, a glass-faced office building will kill far more birds than a windmill.
The "smacking birds out of the air" is due to birds flying into the windmills as if they were a stationary object. The blades don't spin nearly fast enough to do any "smacking."
Actually putting a number on the rate of bird deaths is somewhat controversial, as its fairly difficult to count them, given that it happens so infrequently.
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:5, Funny)
"Actually putting a number on the rate of bird deaths is somewhat controversial, as its fairly difficult to count them, given that it happens so infrequently."
Clearly, we must build more wind farms so that we can gather more accurate data!
Re: (Score:2)
GP's point wasn't about the birds, it was about the fact that no matter WHAT we do someone will complain:
I think this underestimates the ability of someone, somewhere being able to find a problem with anything.
As you pointed out most of those complaints from environmental groups are spurious at best.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only people still talking about windmills and birds are the misinformed, some of them may be environmentalists but the last windfarm to be scraped "due to birds" was here in Australia. The anti-environment minister [theage.com.au] who canned the project was from a conservative right-wing govermnent (note the Liberal party are not liberals). The environmental impact report did not back up his claims about birds and there was not a single protester in sight.
"...it was about t
Re: (Score:2)
This is simply not true. 1700 to 4700 birds die in the windmill farm in Alameda County near the Altamont Pass. Now, that's a ridiculously vague number, there are hundreds of windmills at that site, and it includes electrocutions, but that is not "infrequently". Enough that NIMBY ecos and politicans have placed a moratorium on commerical wind power in the county.
The state of the art is to make the windmills as large as possible - huge windmills turn more slowly and have economies of scale. Lot sof the Altamo
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:5, Insightful)
1700 to 4700 birds die in the windmill farm in Alameda County near the Altamont Pass. Now, that's a ridiculously vague number
Altamont pass has over 4900 windmills. Even on the upper-end of that estimate, it's less than one per year. That's fairly "infrequent"
Also, you're right that the estimate is "ridiculously vague". You can't draw conclusions based on data with a 50% margin of error. If you're getting that kind of error, there's something seriously wrong with your data.
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:5, Informative)
Windmills smack birds out of the air. ...
The "smacking birds out of the air" is due to birds flying into the windmills as if they were a stationary object. The blades don't spin nearly fast enough to do any "smacking."
Actually, they do. Blade tip speeds for big wind machines are upwards of 100 MPH.
The Altamont Pass wind farm is especially bad [biologicaldiversity.org], because it's in a narrow valley on a major bird migration route, a valley full of row after row of relatively small windmills close to the ground. It's a meat-grinder for birds.
Reasonably accurate bird death numbers [biologicaldiversity.org] for the larger birds are available for Altamont Pass. Currently about a thousand big raptors a year, including over 100 golden eagles, are lost to the blades.
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and the deadliest wind farm with all these disadvantages -- not the least of which being the old windmill designs which use scaffolding-like towers which birds find nice for perching and nesting as opposed to the single-pole towers used in new windmills -- kills at most about one raptor per windmill per year.
All Altamont Pass shows is that, like pretty much everything else, wind power can be done badly. And even then, in the deadliest wind farm anywhere, it's far, far better than if you'd stuck a three story office building into the pass instead.
Taller towers, towers that can't be perched or nested on, bigger, slower blades that are easier for birds to see and avoid, and then some cursory studies of bird migrations just to make sure you aren't going to be experiencing unusual amounts of traffic, and bird deaths are essentially trivial.
Re:Intercourse the penguins (Score:4, Insightful)
I call bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Geo-thermal does not create massive amounts of sulphur.
"Do we sterilize the oceans with tidal generators?"
Your kidding right? - Any ideas on just how much energy is in the tides compared to say all the coal on the planet?
"Do we cause massive upheaval that likes of which the most radical Global Warming people do not even think of with massive wind farms?"
How is converting a large part of o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we cause massive upheaval that likes of which the most radical Global Warming people do not even think of with massive wind farms?
Please justify this statement.
Solar isn't able to meet our energy needs so it's not an option
Solar is like electric cars, it can only meet 99% of our needs.
Solar produces peak power when it is needed most and modern solar panels work on cloudy days. PV panels paid back their energy investment in under 7 years 30 years ago. You are either shilling or being stupid.
You can list all the problems with CO2 and I agree, but outside of nuclear it is the smallest footprint out there that can meet our energy needs.
CO2 is not an energy source, it's a byproduct of using a wrong-headed energy storage medium - crude oil, which is ALSO not an energy source.
Nuclear would do quite well but it politically is the hardest of them all to get
Nuclear is indeed my choice for filling in where solar and wind cannot
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This depends on the solar method. There's supposed to be a plant in either the planning or perhaps the early construction stages in Victor Valley, CA, which uses dishes to concentrate solar rays on a Stirling engine. I look periodically to find out its status, but solid progress seems to be a lit
MODS (Score:3, Insightful)
This contradictory pile of anti-science gibberish is insightfull, how?
no consequences (Score:2)
Because, you know, 20 or more 100x7 meter tubes would have absolutely no conceivable effect on marine wildlife in the area.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on where you put them. If they're parked along the Oregon or Northern California Coast (where whales, sea lions, and etc live and thrive), then yeah, it'll be a bother. But if you park them where there's minimal impact (say, off the coast of New York City), or you space them out enough to not pose a hazard, no problem.
Besides, it's a question of how much damage. Potentially disturbing the patterns of some wildlife here or there (without killing them off, obviously) is a helluva lot more responsible
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed, perfectly. It's all a question of impact. (OTOH, there's still an uphill battle of the decades of propaganda concerning nuclear waste).
To be honest, carpeting a desert with solar panels makes zero problems for me... life there is pretty scarce at best in the best-producing areas (e.g. Death Valley), and its not like there's a mad scramble of developers who would complain.
Except (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are the turbine blades open to the sea? I thought one of the challenges of tidal power was to get a working, sealed unit because seawater corrosion (not to mention sealife attachment) is such a problem.
New Method, Old Concept (Score:5, Informative)
Does it have back? (Score:2)
Because MY anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon.
More Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, CO2 from generating electricty might be a problem. But no matter how you slice it, using energy contributes to climate change in various ways.
If you believe that humans are causing the climate to change, the answer is fewer humans. Lots fewer. You can argue that before 1850 humans (all 50 million or so of them) had negligible effects on the climate. After that, well there has been an effect.
Continued growth of human population is going to be having a greater and greater effect. There is no getting away from it.
Re:More Energy (Score:5, Interesting)
If you believe that humans are causing the climate to change, the answer is fewer humans. Lots fewer.
Or the answer could be that each human should have less impact, starting with those with the MOST impact... the people in the USA.
Re:More Energy (Score:4, Interesting)
The US ain't shit. It's CHINA.
Don't get me wrong, Americans are using up resources like crazy with seemingly little regard for the future or for anyone else.
However, CHINA is 100x worse. They are ramping up their economy ridiculously fast and they make us look like environmental super heroes.
Do some research.
There is at least *some* movement in the US towards better energy policies, implementation (not just development) of alternative energy technologies, and an economic motivation to do so stronger than ever before.
I have seen China first hand too by the way. 20 cities, and not as a tourist, but for business. I saw the conditions in the factories and the outer lying urban areas. It's frightening to think about just how large China is going to get in 25 years, how much pollution they will create, and if they learn from our mistakes.
So it's easy to bash on the US, which I am not saying you are doing either, but China is going to be of a progressively greater concern. Any environmental tech you see being deployed in China is something being showcased for the rest of the world. Everything is clean, everyone is bright and happy, everything is just *polished* up till it is all nice and shiny. It only represents the smallest fraction of the whole country and if you are a guest of the government, at any level, you will most likely not see the terrible stuff.
For anybody reading this, I am NOT bashing on China either. I found the people wonderful, the food insanely good, and their country rich with culture and beauty. Just telling it like I saw it. That's it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah you're correct, but nearly all of that activity in China is to feed the wests appetite for cheap stuff. We've just outsourced (some or most of) our own environmental damage to China.
The west has been more than happ
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or the answer could be that each human should have less impact.
Not really. Every human being has a minimum impact on the environment to survive, so at some point we're going to reach an equilibrium. The question is where to place the equilibrium. You might want us all to cut back on energy usage right now, but as population grows further, we'll all have to cut back back on energy usage even more just to maintain the same level.
Personally, I'd rather have 50 people on the entire planet that all live like kings than 50 billion with the standard of living equivalent to
IEEE article on wave power generators (Score:5, Informative)
Ocean Power Catches a Wave [ieee.org]
"The first commercial ocean energy project is scheduled to launch this summer off the coast of Portugal. Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh's Pelamis Wave Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets."
Shoreline damage? (Score:4, Interesting)
Many shorelines require natural wave action and currents to remain healthy. It seems like this is yet another technological "solution" that might in the long run cause more problems. The potential issues with shoreline erosion (or whatever might happen when wave energy is dispersed prior to getting to the shore) won't happen as quickly and obviously as we have seen with wind farm bird kills (apparently those big slow moving windmills are pretty good at whacking birds), the effects could be as disastrous as some of the things we've done with the Florida Everglades and much of the gulf coast.
The point that completely escapes many environmentalists, is that you can't just discard one technology and replace it with another, and expect everything to come out all right. There are damn good reasons behind the scientific method, and they do not include stomping feet, claiming anyone with a different opinion is trying to kill the world, or jumping headlong into untested technologies that, because they aren't bad in the same way as other technologies, must be 100% good. That's an insane way to pursue large-scale technology change, but that's what Gore and his army of environmental extremists consistently propose. Anything that replaces oil must be ok, even if it results in us burning food or in this case, disrupting wave energy and water currents along a stretch of shoreline. What could possibly go wrong? Idiots.
Let's see some long-term studies in limited regional experiments before we dump too much money into this boondoggle. We already wasted far too much cutting down and burning rainforests to grow corn which we then turned around and burned... How about using tried and true scientific methods before we rush into something really harmful.
In the meantime, we already have plenty of reasonably safe and clean technologies that have been in use for decades. Every nuclear power mishap that has ever occurred caused a mere fraction of the casualties we've had in just the last decade of conventional power plant and oil refinery mishaps... How about we start using the technology that doesn't actually kill anyone on an annual basis?
7 meters in diameter? (Score:2)
I wonder how many joyriders would try sailing right through these things? They'd probably do quite well too, until they hit the turbine that is...
How this is news? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Pelamis is based on the relative motion of fixed segments, this is based on the flow of water through a tube.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It always strikes me as optimistic when I see estimated power outputs and supposedly how many homes that would power.
It strikes me as completely fraudulent when I see a non-constant used as an example of a constant metric. I can think of a few things that I'd rather see used.
IIRC, one "horsepower" is something like 735 watts, so a megawatt is...let's see...carry the two...about 1360 horsepower.
So...one of these tubes is the rough equivalent of three C5 Corvettes running wide open or in audio terms, 1/3 of a Rolling Stones concert.