WaveNET – the Floating, Flexible Wave Energy Generator 90
Zothecula writes: Scotland's Albatern is putting a new, modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that harvest wave energy as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. Each Squid can link up to as many as three others, effectively creating a large, floating grid that's flexible in every direction. The bigger this grid gets, the more efficient it becomes at harvesting energy, and the more different wave movements it can extract energy from. Albatern's 10-year target is to have 1.25 kilometer-long floating energy farms pumping out as much as 100 megawatts by 2024.
Niche energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Median energy density in waves is too low in most places. You need way too large machines to extract useful amounts of power. The few times you get sufficiently powerful waves they tend to rip your equipment to bits.
Wave energy is one of those ideas which seem really obvious from a distance, so the fact that project after project fails does not seem to dissuade anyone. They were obviously just doing it wrong.
I really hope that I am wrong and this turns out to be a great success, but I am not holding my breath.
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For almost everything that works there was a time when it didn't work. Just because others have failed in the past doesn't mean it's impossible.
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Which is why Youtube has tons of over unity 'free energy' videos. They say the same thing.
Its that damn reality that keeps getting in the way!
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There are functional wave powered ocean vessels.
There is no such thing as 'free energy' in the sense of something from nothing, it has t
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That's the problem - you can't really tap into the kinetic energy of the wave from the surface. The up-down motion of the wave is just a boundary layer height change due to a transient lateral pressure differential in the water. i.e. The water pressure is higher at this point than at a point 1 meter away, while the air pressure is the same in bo
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The question isn't how much energy is there in a wave. The question is if you can extract enough for it to be worth it. The answer of course is a big yes. That's why so many companies are engaged in this kind of research. Same goes for the wind. A wind turbine only extracts a small portion of the energy that's in the wind but that's irrelevant as long as it can generate enough energy to be worth building and running the damn thing.
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A lot of companies are involved in a lot of renewables tech research. That doesn't mean that any particular one is going to be profitable. The vast majority are going to be big failures.
Wave power's track record so far has been subpar to say the least. And looking at their diagrams, I can't imagine that they're not headed straight for the same fate. Even if we assume that their numbers aren't overly optimistic, their design looks like it would involve several times more steel per nameplate capacity than a w
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The force of the wave deforms the bladder which, in still water, has a pressure gradient neutral to that of the surrounding ocean. The deformation will cause a l
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ocean swells which could've provided energy to propel ships.
Energy yes.
but you are aware that wind and sails are a very simple means to propell a ship without any need to store/convert energy and then use it in a special device likema propeller?
It's because average wind energy is denser than the fraction of wave energy you can extract from something bobbing on the surface.
That is nonsense.
The rest of your post makes not much sense either. Who cares about efficiency? The only things that are relevant are: co
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Who cares about efficiency? The only things that are relevant are: cost, space, amount of energy/power produced.
I'd say the guy performing the cost estimate, because efficiency at extraction is a key indicator to how much space you'll need to produce your target amount of power(or how much power your limited space can produce), which determines how much equipment you need to do it, which drives cost. That's without considering that if you need to purchase/lease/rent land or area rights there can be a cost there as well.
But as an executive deciding between different options, you're right.
Re: Niche energy (Score:2)
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No matter how inefficient it is, as long as it's going to produce significant amounts of energy over its lifetime and doesn't pollute then it's worth doing. 20 year payback is fine, as long as the energy is clean.
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Unsolved problems (Score:2)
Wave energy is one of those ideas which seem really obvious from a distance, so the fact that project after project fails does not seem to dissuade anyone. They were obviously just doing it wrong.
Do you know how many rockets were unsuccessfully fired before we finally got one safely into space? Do you know how many airplanes were lost before we managed to make flight safe? How many boats were lost crossing the oceans?
Just because we haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean we won't. Only way to crack the problem is to try.
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Add one to that count. I tried building a fusion generator last night when I was drunk. Just like all the other attempts mine didn't work either.
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Add one to that count. I tried building a fusion generator last night when I was drunk. Just like all the other attempts mine didn't work either.
Perhaps you just suck at building fusion generators, like the Apollo 13 astronauts sucked at stirring [xkcd.com].
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Add one to that count. I tried building a fusion generator last night when I was drunk. Just like all the other attempts mine didn't work either.
Perhaps you just suck at building fusion generators, like the Apollo 13 astronauts sucked at stirring [xkcd.com].
Well, what do you expect, when you send Forrest Gump into space.
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I know. Van Braun had so many of his V1 rockets crash into England before we finally managed to get a rocket into space!
That's a new one! I only knew about the pulse jet propelled V1s. The only WWII Von Braun rockets most of us had heard of were the V2s.
As far as is known, no rocket propelled V1s ever crashed into England, or anywhere else for that matter.
Perhaps they all went into space....
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Median energy density in waves is too low in most places.
Note: "Scotland"
I don't predict that will be a problem for the locations they're likely to be planning on. :)
Re:Niche energy (Score:5, Interesting)
There may be amore important reason to develop wave energy. In most parts of the UK, shoreline erosion is a serious problem. Any technology that saps the energy of incoming waves is a good thing for countries with this problem.
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[SIGH] [Pulls on hard hat with "Rig geologist" written on the front.]
There are some fairly small areas where shoreline erosion is a problem. Most of them are on the East coast, south of approximately Humberside. A few problematic spots along the south coast. Or, if you want to look at it another way, in the relatively sheltered parts of the innermost English Channel and Southern North Sea, where the coasts of Holland and France are just a few
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Wrong on all accounts.
Neither is the energy of waves to low nor do they rip anything apart. And yes, around coasts waves are very common ... no idea why you think waves would not be available at some spots ... sure, big lakes, even the meditarien, might be to small. But oceans always have waves.
We are talking here about off shore waves, not breakers that ram into a steep coast.
Wave energy systems we have since decades. But so far they where not economic (durability, maintenance etc. ) feasable.
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Human flight is one of those ideas which seem really obvious from a distance, so the fact that project after project fails does not seem to dissuade anyone. They were obviously just doing it wrong.
With most new tech the R&D happens in a lab out of public view. The numerous failures are hidden from view and you just see the final, working prototype or a finished product. Unfortunately that isn't possible for large projects like this, so they have to do their R&D in public.
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You've not been to Scotland :-)
The waves don't need to be large or on the surface - most "wave" machines are located underwater and get a steady undulation of water going past them.
Of course the best thing about this type of renewable is that it generates electricity all the time.
Saltwater and MTBF (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish them the best of luck but saltwater is particularly nasty stuff over over an extended period of time. Hopefully they can find a cheap way to insulate against it.
Re:Saltwater and MTBF (Score:4, Funny)
Stop trying to be so nice and polite. What you really meant to say is that this aint ever gonna work because salt water is a crazy fucked up environment. Harebrained schemes like this always fail because seawater is so corrosive that maintenance costs will eat up any and all profits.
Haven't seen anyone mention it yet, but only a couple months ago there was a Slashdot story about another wave power generation scheme that failed. Cause? Salt water and high maintenance costs.
Re:Saltwater and MTBF (Score:5, Informative)
Cathodic protection [wikipedia.org] is a well understood science. I have seen sub-sea pipeline equipment that had been immersed for 20 years actuate like they are brand new.
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Indeed. And one of these days, they will crack it. It is not far out of reach. It just needs some engineering optimizations. And once the saltwater problem is solved, the solution will benefit other things working in saltwater as well.
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Even though it is a tough engineering problem, i'm sure that there are solutions out there.
For instance I have heard many times the nuclear industry to claim that they have solved harder problems with their molten-salt breeder designs.
So if they have found a way to handle super-heated, radioactively saturated, oxidizing salts, how much difficult would be to handle sea-salts at standard temperatures?
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It's not a question of whether or not it can be handled. Of course it can be handled, you just take the thing out of the water every x hours and repair/clean/repaint/whatever it. The question is, what's the value of 'x', and what's the associated cost, and at what point does that prevent the whole enterprise from being uneconomical?
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You do know that Scottland and also other european countries have test installations in sea water since over 20 years?
Ah, you don't ... how smart to point out the obvious. I really wonder why eceryone on /. always think that some random european engineers and companies (especially if it is regarding energy) are idiots?
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Did I say European engineers are idiots? Or any engineers?
Of course they can make it work, I was saying the project will fail due to economics, not because they can't engineer. Like the Concorde, an engineering marvel but economic failure.
Here's an earlier Slashdot story and comment that sums it up nicely:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
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There are plenty of working schemes:
Wave Dragon [wikipedia.org]
Pelamis [wikipedia.org]
Oyster [wikipedia.org]
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I'm not sure how much longer Pelamis will be around:-
Wave power firm Pelamis calls in administrators [bbc.co.uk]
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Rance Tidal Power Station [wikipedia.org] opened in 1966, still going strong, salty water not a problem.
The UK is planning a large tidal lagoon, backed by Prudential Insurance, they don't seem to be in the slightest bit worried about salty water either. UK Renewables May Be Turning The Tide [oilprice.com]
And of course there's a global shipping industry. Coal doesn't go by airplane.
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much more energy in wind (Score:1)
energy is mass times velocity squared. Energy flux flowing over a windmill has another velocity, so velocity cubed.
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Not that I know anything about this stuff, but it seems like water should have more energy. 1,000Kg/m^3 for water compared to like 1.25Kg/m^3 for air. It seems like the difference in mass would blow away (HURRR) any but the most extreme difference in velocity.
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Why don't youndo the math then?
Energy is m * v ^ 2.
Obviously doubeling the v goes to the square for total energy, while doubeling the mass only doubles the energy.
Wind energy increases in a turbine with the speed by the cube because first of all the air follows the same e = m * v ^ 2 ... but on top of that if you double the speed not only do you have (2 * v) ^ 2 but also (2 * m) as in the same time, now twice the mass of air goes through the turbine (twice the mass times twice the speed).
yes but we're a group of islands in the Atlantic (Score:2)
This may be so but we (the British Isles) are a group of islands in the Atlantic, we get waves rolling around our coastline 24/7, coming in a long way across open ocean, and we've got a lot of sea. We're a relatively small island and people get protective about windfarms getting built on land. So it's a reliable source of energy to explore in a place not many folk mind too much having installations on, definitely worth researching scaleable solutions here.
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... people get protective about windfarms getting built on land
The problem sometimes is that the people from the location are all for it but NIMBYs are brought in specially.
I Come from further north than Aberdeen. In Orkney, we have had wind turbines for decades but various people would come from central or southern England and try to drum up opposition. I once had some on my (parents) doorstep. They told me about the harm that these things would do to me and how noisy they were. I declined and they moved on. I don't remember a single friend or relative who was in
Interesting... (Score:2)
This is one of the more novel designs I've seen. It seems to be scaled to a good size for wave action near the coastline, it's modular and extensible, and it looks like it would allow for small vessels to navigate over the grid, as long as their draft depth is shallow enough. Another advantage is that it doesn't "ruin the skyline" the way a wind farm might do in Massachusetts.Also, the ocean is more "reliable" as an energy source than wind or solar... this method ought to deliver a more "reliable" 24/7 outp
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Ona grand scale wind and solar are reliable.
They are just not dispatchable.
A huge difference!
I wish they succeed too!!! (Score:1)
1. Powerful wave movements can rip equipments apart
2. Salt water is such a damaging factor to the equipments
So my thought is that not only a power farm is located in a mild whether area... but also weather forecast data should be used to relocate the farm over an enormous area of ocean surface to avoid damage to equipment... and yet that area is still inside the national territory waters of any particular country... Otherwise they'd have to find a way to protect th
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We use metal structures that are in contact with the ocean all the time. It's not suicidal in the slightest.
Environmentalist objection (Score:2)
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Excuse me, but this is like your employer asking you why you want more pay for your work than necessary to keep you from starving until the next workday... I mean, maybe he doesn't WANT to pay you more than that but you DO want as much as you can get.
Slashdot is a business, not a public service.
bad idea (Score:2)
Kevin Costner would approve (Score:2)
ah yea... (Score:3)
This wont work...
Here's the key piece of their mechanism:
http://images.gizmag.com/galle... [gizmag.com]
It's 25 meters beneath the north sea... in the midst of a spiderweb of steel...
That joint is most likely to fail during a storm.
When it does fail, you'd now have a floating buoy dangling a giant steel beam beneath it, riding storm waves...
and crashing into the rest of the network.
Storm conditions will prevent you from doing anything about it until the damage is done.
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I wonder how much effect a storm will have on some equipment 25 metres below sea level?
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When that equipment is attached to a floating buoy? Quite a bit.
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You are so smart and they are so dumb. it's guaranteed that they spent no time doing any calculations about this. Every engineer they have has never even seen the ocean, only designed stuff on paper/computers in nice clean rooms. They've never run any simulations, or done any physical testing at all, because all engineers just know that complex new things always work perfectly the first time.
So just call them and talk to the receptionist, or send them an e
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You like to use the word "Pundit" in a derogatory manner quite frequently. I think that you've completely misunderstood the entire point of the site you're frequenting. If you don't like punditry, you shouldn't be here. It would be similar to if you left negative commends on Pornhub like "She should put more clothes on!"
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Really? Wow, good job we had you to warn us that all those marine engineers who designed the thing are idiots. After all, you came to your conclusion from just a photo, so how could they possibly have missed it?!
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Right, because Marine engineers working for an energy company have never built something that could fail during adverse conditions right?
http://i.imgur.com/rUNFYnD.jpg [imgur.com]
Maritime accidents will happen. It's not a matter of if you can prevent them, you can't. Marine environments are some of the most extreme environments on earth. This will fail... It's a question of what will happen once it does. Given their design, it wont be good.