The New World of Tidal Power

It seems that the "Base our entire society on something we burn faster than it's made" strategy has one or two problems.  Especially when you make a habit of blowing up the parts of the world it comes from.  People are increasingly looking at energy sources which are less volatile (both literally and figuratively), and while solar is enjoying some time in the sun some are turning to the tides.

There are exaJoules of energy to be had everywhere there's a coast, and it's not like we're ever going to run out of moon (unless NASA gets significantly more vigorous in terms of sample collection).  The problem is that seawater is right at the bottom of the list of things machines like, just below "gremlins" and "gremlins covered in powerful magnets and metal-dissolving acid."  The variability of the tides also makes it difficult to harness.

One intelligent option put forward by Portuguese power-people and Professor Mei of MIT is the Oscillating Water Column (OWC).  This system uses the water to push a contained column of air back and forth, and air is a hell of a lot easier to work with than water.  No matter where in the column the water resides, its motion pumps airflow over a rotor that drives an electricity generating motor.  In fact, a large enough OWC can be built to resonate with the wave frequency, radically increasing the effectiveness of the energy extraction.  The only problem is the timescale for this project: those involved admit it may still be decades before the power plants can be made effective enough for widespread use.

This could be a serious hurdle, since the only reason people are listening at all is the price of oil.  But we can be fairly sure we'll still actually need electricity in a couple of decades, and short-term thinking for such essential services is no good.  In the absolute short-term, rubbing your hands together is a faster way to feel warmer than screwing around with twigs and flint.  We should count ourselves lucky no cavemen had to justify the cost-effectiveness of rubbing sticks together.

Posted by Luke McKinney

Tidal Power Plants

Comments

[Shalom Gery]

There are many type of turbines that generate electric power from the motion of sea water. All they waiting for is higher fuel price and good investment.(Google tidal power)
But the world is not in a rush, probably waiting for bigger disasters.
Shalom
Melbourne

[John Caley]

Tidal Power is the future..electricity is the fuel for all

[claudio]

Very Good article...I agree.....there are a lot of gigajoules out-there...lets grasp them and convert into electric power.

Tydal forces are difficult to keep under control ?? So it is the wind that is even more dispersive in the time-location domains.

Turbins on rivers and dams are kind of still used...I guess.

We do not care as the big investors of Oil and Gas do not care and they make much more money out of pumping-trasporting-distibuting-burning the Hydrocarbons.

They do NOT care less...and so do the various governments that get big taxes from the BIG O&G investors.....(also including mine).

I agree with the good remark of Shalom.

Until the next disaster we will NOT weak up.

Regards

Claudio