Tidal power

[arcticpenguin]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../nm/20030920/sc_nm/environment_energy_moon_dc

A tidal current in a sea channel near the town of Hammerfest, caused by the gravitational tug of the moon on the earth, started turning the 10-meter (33 ft) blades of a turbine bolted to the seabed to generate electricity for the local grid.

The prototype looks like an underwater windmill and is expected to generate about 700,000 kilowatt hours of non-polluting energy a year, or enough to light and heat about 30 homes.

"This is the first time in the world that electricity from a tidal current has been fed into a power grid," Harald Johansen, managing director of Hammerfest Stroem which has led the project, told Reuters.

 

[Pyrian]

I'm curious how they expect to keep it from clogging with sand and killing enough marine life to entice PETA into dancing naked on it.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I wonder what the environmental effects are?

People always tell me that solar panels have no environmental effects. Imagine lots and lots of them. The ground underneath them is not being heated by sunlight. Is that okay?

~~ Paul

 

[Leif Roar]

I wonder what the environmental effects are?

People always tell me that solar panels have no environmental effects. Imagine lots and lots of them. The ground underneath them is not being heated by sunlight. Is that okay?

~~ Paul

Nope, it's not. On the other hand, though, solar panels are practially always placed on buildings. Since the building already shadows for the sunlight, adding a solar-panel ontop of it doesn't have any detrimental effects. On the gripping hand, however, solar panels have to be produced which causes some pollution.

 

[toddjh]

On the gripping hand, however, solar panels have to be produced which causes some pollution.

They have to be disposed of, too, which isn't so friendly either -- they contain a fair amount of some pretty nasty materials like arsenic, cadmium, and lead. They're also usually coupled with a pretty large bank of batteries, which have similar disposal problems.

Jeremy

 

[bjornart]

Here's a link to the power company. Hammerfest strøm

The newest press release has a little information on the construction of the turbines, and says that impact studies have been done, and that observing the effect on local marine wildlife is one of the purposes of the project.

I can't really see how sand is going to 'clog' these things, and with 1.8 m/s current I don't think the blades will be spinning too fast for fish to get out of the way.

 

[Pyrian]

Funky, it really is an underwater windmill farm.

Do they have a material that will keep barnacles and such from clinging to these things and clogging them and/or messing up their hydrodynamics?

 

[Mr. Skinny]

Funky, it really is an underwater windmill farm.

Do they have a material that will keep barnacles and such from clinging to these things and clogging them and/or messing up their hydrodynamics?

There are coatings under development.

Can't give you a cite or a name unfortunately, without getting into trouble at work.

 

[Diamond]

All of this to produce overpriced electricity. It would be more environmentally friendly to build a nuclear plant (a small one).

Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

 

[Yahweh]

Perhaps this could be an alternative fuel source for the Matrix...

 

[Ziggurat]

I wonder what the environmental effects are?

People always tell me that solar panels have no environmental effects. Imagine lots and lots of them. The ground underneath them is not being heated by sunlight. Is that okay?

~~ Paul

Trees turn sunlight into stored chemical energy. Imagine lots and lots of them. The ground underneath them is not being heated by sunlight. Is that okay?

Solar panels do not pose a problem in this regard. Most of the solar energy is going to be converted to heat on the surface of the panels themselves, and it doesn't matter if that heats the air in contact with the ground itself or the air several feet up. And even the energy that is converted into electricity is going to make it back into the environment as heat anyways, after it's used to power appliances, lights, or whatever.