World's First Ocean Hybrid Platform Converts Tidal Waves Into Energy (ieee.org) 39
Qusi Alqarqaz writes via IEEE Spectrum: In August I spoke with Philipp Sinn, founder of Sinn Power, a German green-energy startup founded in 2014. This year he and his colleagues began building and testing the world's first ocean hybrid platform. The floating platform uses a combination of wave, wind, and solar energy to harness renewable energy on the open seas, Sinn says. The company has been testing the structure, which has attracted investors, energy experts, scientists, and government officials from all over the world to Heraklion, the largest city on the Greek Island of Crete.
The wind, wave, and photovoltaic platform is scalable in capacity and can be designed to generate 80 kilowatts to power small houses by the coast and up to 2 megawatts to industrial buildings, Sinn says. The technology can be adapted to customers' needs and location requirements, he adds. He acknowledges that the maritime environment is challenging. All the energy systems on the platform contain sensitive components and power electronics that must not be exposed to any fluids, he says.
To cope with such conditions, the company developed a product family consisting of electric machines, power electronics, and storage solutions, all of which comply with International Protection Code 68, which classifies and rates degrees of protection provided by mechanical casings and electrical enclosures against intrusion, dust, accidental contact, and immersion in deep water. "We see [our company's] technologies as a movement toward a sustainable future," Sinn says. "The goal is to provide people all over the world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy harnessed from the power of the ocean." "Development of ocean-energy production -- from concept to commercial release -- has been a slow, expensive process," writes Alqarqaz in closing. "For the industry to succeed, it is essential to get financial support from governments all over the world. It is also important to strengthen the cooperation between countries, especially with regard to joint projects and the exchange of technology."
The wind, wave, and photovoltaic platform is scalable in capacity and can be designed to generate 80 kilowatts to power small houses by the coast and up to 2 megawatts to industrial buildings, Sinn says. The technology can be adapted to customers' needs and location requirements, he adds. He acknowledges that the maritime environment is challenging. All the energy systems on the platform contain sensitive components and power electronics that must not be exposed to any fluids, he says.
To cope with such conditions, the company developed a product family consisting of electric machines, power electronics, and storage solutions, all of which comply with International Protection Code 68, which classifies and rates degrees of protection provided by mechanical casings and electrical enclosures against intrusion, dust, accidental contact, and immersion in deep water. "We see [our company's] technologies as a movement toward a sustainable future," Sinn says. "The goal is to provide people all over the world with clean, reliable, and affordable energy harnessed from the power of the ocean." "Development of ocean-energy production -- from concept to commercial release -- has been a slow, expensive process," writes Alqarqaz in closing. "For the industry to succeed, it is essential to get financial support from governments all over the world. It is also important to strengthen the cooperation between countries, especially with regard to joint projects and the exchange of technology."
Wow! International Protection Code 68! (Score:4, Informative)
That's simply the longwinded way of saying it has what we would typically refer to as an IP68 rating, i.e. the same rating you'll find on plenty of consumer electronics. Instead of reading it as 68, it should be read as 6 and 8. The 6 is the best score possible (i.e. 6 out of 6) for resistance against solid particulates, in this case being rated to resist intrusion of even things so fine as dust. The 8 is the best score possible (i.e. 8 out of 8) for resistance to liquids, in this case being rated to resist full immersion in water at a depth greater than 1m.
You'll find IP67 and IP68 ratings on all sorts of everyday electronics—phones, smart watches, etc.—that are designed to endure some time in the water.
Re: Wow! International Protection Code 68! (Score:5, Funny)
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Indeed, and to think that every mobile phone todayt is marketed as having IPxx protection you'd think even a millenial /. editor would know something about the term.
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Re:Wow! International Protection Code 68! (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, I agree it’s a bad system, but this is the international standard, with the organization tracing its roots back to turn of the 20th century Paris, France. It’s not like they were unaware of SI units.
And the ratings are generally intended to have trained electrical engineers as their audience, not everyday consumers, so yes, they are supposed to know what the ratings are out of, the same way a sound technician would know that the distinction between dB and (the very commonly used) dBA is that dBA has been A-weighted [wikipedia.org] in an attempt to account for human perception, or how seismologists will understand that the Richter scale (and the more commonly used modern scales but are still incorrectly referred to as the “Richter scale”) are almost all logarithmic instead of linear.
What would a 10 represent anyway? Why should solid particle or water protection be measured out of 10, when each number in the current system corresponds to a discrete level of protection [wikipedia.org]?
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There's two nations in the world that predominately use the imperial measurement system. One of them sent men to the moon. Who's too stupid?
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Actually, the US has never used the Imperial system. Both America and the UK used the earlier English system until 1824, at which point the UK made a few tweaks and called it the Imperial system. Because America was already independent by that point, America didn't adopt those changes directly, but they did make comparable updates to their use of the English system, eventually formalizing it in 1832 as the US Customary system that Americans are used to today.
Notably, there are quite a few differences betwee [wikipedia.org]
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Humans use base 10 units.
Humans use whatever makes sense for the situation. I routinely use base 2, base 8, and base 16 in addition to base 10 because I work with computers. Does that make me something more or less than human? No. Moreover, there are plenty of cultures that use or have used systems other than base 10. For instance, some Native American peoples counted the spaces between their fingers, rather than their fingers, so they used a base 8 system. Likewise, base 5 systems were (are?) used by a number of Australian aborigi
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Minor correction: the US uses the "US Customary" system, not "American Standard". My mistake.
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While hours and minutes may be out of 12 and 60, the fact that you just expressed them in base 10 (i.e. ten and two for twelve, and six tens for sixty) should be an indication that they aren’t necessarily base 12 and base 60. To be base 12 and base 60, we’d see characters or expressions to represent the digits beyond nine, just like we do with base 16 when it goes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F for the numbers zero through fifteen.
The previous poster is conflating all sorts of di
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IP68 wouldn't cut it at sea though, they must have gone way beyond that. The main issues at sea are that the constant movement of salt water wears everything down and corrodes.
IP68 is fine. Still very much experimental though. (Score:2)
It appears that the whole talk of IP68 is referring to the powertrain [sinnpower.com] on their Wave Energy Converter modules.
Which is indeed sealed inside an aluminum casing so corrosion and water shouldn't be a problem.
As for IP68 - there really isn't much room where rating CAN go.
6 is highest for dust and particles.
8 is immersion in water up to 3 meters, 9 is the final rating - meaning that the device is protected from "close-range high pressure, high-temperature spray downs". [wikipedia.org]
Basically, electronics mounted on the outside
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I have some experience in this area, having made products that are designed for permanent submersion.
One interesting thing to note is that while everyone is focused on how deep something can go before it leaks, actually in some cases shallow water can be worse. Reason being that if you have seals then the pressure deeper down compresses them and makes them more effective. In shallow water they relax and start leaking.
Of course IP68 does mean that it will be okay in shallow water as well, but I do wonder how
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but I do wonder how many companies test at 3m depth and not 3cm depth.
IPx8 rating must be greater than IPx7 - which tops out at 1 m depth immersion.
So, 103 cm immersion - yes, possibly. 3 cm... not really an IPxX rating.
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What theoretical about it? its all using known working tech.
Can I see one of these platforms in operation? Is this technology producing even 1% of the energy we use in the USA or in the world? Until it's in actual operation on the grid it remains theoretical.
On the other hand we have nuclear power producing about 8% of the energy in the USA, and about 20% of our electricity. Wind and hydro each produce about 7% of our electricity. That's how we get practical low CO2 energy today.
Solutions are being worked on for all the CO2 emitters like cement production, it'll take a while to convert them to use any solution, it won't be overnight.
Yes, it will take a while to convert over to low CO2 energy in the USA. Had we not
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According to the Chinese: A journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step.
According to the Americans all journeys start with massive expense in dollars
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According to the Chinese: A journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step.
People have been proposing these hybrid energy floating platforms in some form or another for over 40 years now, when will they take the first step in building them?
On the other hand we have hydro, onshore wind, nuclear fission, and geothermal power. In the 1940s civilian nuclear fission power was a theory, 40 years later we had 100 reactors built in the USA. In the 1980s onshore wind power for producing electricity was a novelty, today it's providing 7% of our electricity in the USA and is growing fast.
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I'm seeing a lot of people scream loudly on how they "embrace the science" of global warming. What I'm not seeing is anyone taking any serious steps in solving the problem.
That's because a huge population of the Global Warming crew are little more than "performance artists".
They scream, and they rant, and they tell everyone (in the vaguest terms possible) what they SHOULD be doing.
Then, when they're not ranting, they're rolling coal and buying cars that get 25 gallons to the mile.
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Tides are driven by the moon's gravitational pull. If we pull energy out of them, then that will pull the moon closer to earth, and we will all die!
Since the moon is moving away from Earth currently then this is our chance to keep it from spinning off and colliding with some future Mars colony.
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There is no such thing as "tidal waves". The title is nonsense, as usual with BeauHD.
Waves are driven by winds, but not necessarily local wind.
Tides are driven by the moon, and in some places they cause strong currents that can be used to generate power, but this is not the case here: these platforms use waves.
Mostly nonsense (Score:2)
TFA has almost zero information content. Wow, they designed stuff to be resistant to water intrustion, because - gee - it's on the ocean.
And these platforms (none of which exist yet) could theoretically scale to 2 megawatts of power generation. I mean, that's as much as...one big wind turbine. Only with the added complexity of combining wind turbines, solar cells and tidal generators.
For all we know, the company may have a great concept here, but TFA sure does a lousy job of selling it...
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TFA has almost zero information content. Wow, they designed stuff to be resistant to water intrustion, because - gee - it's on the ocean.
And these platforms (none of which exist yet) could theoretically scale to 2 megawatts of power generation. I mean, that's as much as...one big wind turbine. Only with the added complexity of combining wind turbines, solar cells and tidal generators.
For all we know, the company may have a great concept here, but TFA sure does a lousy job of selling it...
It's unlikely they have a great concept here. I've seen this before brought up by a number of people. A couple such people I can recall are Amory Lovins and that loony moonbat Dr. Helen Caldicott. I see that Amory Lovins has been trying to sell things like this since the 1970s, and Caldicott has been for likely just as long.
We have 50 years of experience with energy technologies that have proven records of being safe, plentiful, low in CO2 emissions and other environmental impacts, low in raw material ne
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And the illustration shows some flimsy thing that looks like it would fall apart upon being hit by a medium sized wave.
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There is some more detail on their website:
https://www.sinnpower.com/floa... [sinnpower.com]
They say each section is 12x12m. They also show the small wind turbines, each about 1.5kW.
They claim it will withstand 2M waves which doesn't seem unreasonable for the size. The solar panels though... Those are going to need some serious protection.
I just can't see how it will be worth the effort. The amount of energy generated won't be enough to justify the cost unless it's extremely cheap. I suppose it is just made out of steel tu
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So, suitable for small lakes only, highest wave on lake superior in 2017 was 29foot. I think the beauty of renewables is in their simplicity, wind = a motor on a stick, solar = a sheet that generates electricity. Their design throws that out the window for the worst of all worlds, it won't be price competitive.
It's a shame our politicians don't have vision, I'd like to see us build big to get economies of scale and put a lot more money into storage systems to complement renewable energy including hydrogen a
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Yep - mount a few politicians on big sticks - that should do it!
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need more. (Score:2)
Slack tide lunacy (Score:1)
Slack tide, no wind and night time oh my!
Power loss due to slack tide will make you aware of moon phase. This could turn a person into a lunatic.
Existing tidal systems say (Score:1)
The power output of this thing is some kilowats? We're supposed to take this and think "OMG renewable energy is finally here" and even then its mainy solar and wind turbines on a floaty platform.
The Meygen project [simecatlantis.com] in Scotland is running at an output of 6MW - so far having produced 17GWh - from 4 underwater turbines in a tidal stream, with plans to phase in more to generate 400MW.
You won't find articles about this on slashdot though, too mainstream and established, not sensational hype enough.