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Science Technology

New Tidal-Energy Testbed Launched In Devon 62

Posted by timothy from the lowered-might-be-a-better-word dept.
JaJ_D writes " According to the Beeb, Lynmonth in North Devon (in the south west of the UK) have just launched a new tidal energy generating system. The system is different to others by having the rotor blades fully under water and turning at about 20 rpm (so no harm to the fish). Each '...single 11 metre-long rotor blade will be capable of producing 300 kilowatts of electricity and will be a test-bed for further tidal turbines' Clean, relatively cheap and very little damage to the environment either by discharges or damage to the views. I wonder how many more will be made."
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New Tidal-Energy Testbed Launched In Devon More

New Tidal-Energy Testbed Launched In Devon

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  • You are slowing the moon down!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by OwnerOfWhinyCat ( 654476 ) * on Monday June 16, 2003 @06:00PM (#6217930)
    Stop it. Just STOP it!

    This message brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of Astronomical Zealotry

  • I'm impressed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hawkbug ( 94280 ) <.psx. .at. .fimble.com.> on Monday June 16, 2003 @06:02PM (#6217947) Homepage
    I think that US states like California and Florida need to investigate energy strategies like this as soon as possible. With all these recent improvements with Solar, Wind, and now Tidal energy sources, I'm amazed that the US isn't doing more to utilize them.

    • Re:I'm impressed (Score:1, Insightful)

      by ObviousGuy ( 578567 )
      It may be cleaner, but it isn't cheaper than fossil fuels. California's problem isn't that they don't have enough power, it's that it's too expensive.
      • Aren't those two intertwinded? Supply and Demand, if they have too much power then costs will drop, if they have to little it will go up. I know this is a gross simplification, but isn't it the overall trend.
    • Exactly!

      I think that the energy companies of the US should be the ones leading the charge into cleaner methods of power generation. Its very much the same in the automobile industry, one of the only reasons that we don't have alternative fuels in the mainstream is because the car companies scratching the backs of the oil companies who cozy up with the government in all those fuel taxes.

      I think its starting to move in the right direction, with companies such as Ford and GM seriously investigating and devel

    • Re:I'm impressed (Score:5, Informative)

      by lirkbald ( 119477 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @09:48PM (#6219550)
      They have. California, at least. If you take the 10 east from Los Angeles, you'll see literally thousands of windmills through some of the mountain passes. I think my electric bills usually indicate that one or two percent of my power is coming from wind power.

      The problem with both wind and tidal is you can't just toss them up anywhere- you need somewhere with steady, fairly strong winds, or unusually large tides. I don't know much about tidal, but I doubt florida is going to have much luck with wind power- it's dead flat, and the best places for wind power tend to be mountain passes, which 'funnel' in the wind.

      • Re:I'm impressed (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fish_in_the_c ( 577259 )
        That is not nessary true about the need for montians. You would note that it is also quite possible to build windmills in very flat areas because the wind picks up well there. IE. North Dakota has a lot of wind and so do most places in the ocean. I read an article. I thought it was around here somewhere about how all the greenpeace people who live on cape cod were suffering from not in my back yard syndrome over a proposed windmill project out in the ocean that would provide 70% of the power new england
        • It's not greenpeace people, afaik, that don't want the turbines near cape cod. It's all of the people who own million dollar homes there or on Martha's Vineyard, and don't want "their" view spoiled (as if somehow owning property near there makes a view "theirs").

      • Re:I'm impressed (Score:4, Funny)

        by Red Rocket ( 473003 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @10:44AM (#6223132)
        ...I doubt florida is going to have much luck with wind power- it's dead flat, and the best places for wind power tend to be mountain passes, which 'funnel' in the wind.

        Which is why the next Americas Cup race will be held in Colorado.
      • I doubt florida is going to have much luck with wind power- it's dead flat, and the best places for wind power tend to be mountain passes, which 'funnel' in the wind.

        Actually, during the summer, Florida tends to get much more wind than it knows what to do with.
    • I agree completely, but it may be that that there aren't any really good locations around the US coastline to use this technology, as the geography of the UK is significantly different (they have much larger tides than the US).

      The big problem with the US and such technologies is that the oil industry and all it's related offspring (automotive, etc) have way too much influence on Washington, which is the reason we are so dependent on the middle east. Without washington to back the use of these technologies i

    • I think that US states like California and Florida need to investigate energy strategies like this as soon as possible. With all these recent improvements with Solar, Wind, and now Tidal energy sources, I'm amazed that the US isn't doing more to utilize them.

      As other posts have noted, the NIMBY is one problem. If you ask me, the real problem is the assumption that power needs to come from large, centralized facilities run by big companies. So we end up with huge, multi-million to billion dollar proj

      • Yeah, you make some great points here about the way this country works in terms of power, etc. I could slap up my own solar panels on my roof in suburban colorado, but as far as wind power goes, I doubt the old HOA will allow me to install a huge windmill on my roof :) I'd love to have some nice solar panels up around my house generating power so I wouldn't have to purchase it from the dirty sources you talk about.

      • Centralization still has advantages (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        (Spamalamadingdong, posting AC because I used mod points here... but I didn't mod the parent.)

        I think that US states like California and Florida need to investigate energy strategies like this as soon as possible. With all these recent improvements with Solar, Wind, and now Tidal energy sources, I'm amazed that the US isn't doing more to utilize them.

        As other posts have noted, the NIMBY is one problem. If you ask me, the real problem is the assumption that power needs to come from large, centralized f

  • Go ahead... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Atario ( 673917 )
    ...swim through there. I dares ya. I DOUBLE DOG dares ya.
    • good point. 20 rpm is still too damn quick for us humans to get out of the way.
      I hope they've made it bloody obvious where these damn things are - I don't want to wander into one whilst diving.

  • Glad to see us doing stuff about this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by loadquo ( 659316 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @06:25PM (#6218184) Homepage
    The UK needs to do more offshore work on wind/wave and tides as this is the most likely schemes to work (solar, this is Britain we are talking about :), no thermal and little onshore Hydro to speak of).
    We have lots of NIMBYs (not in my back yard) because of the eye sore etc. So underwater turbines should be good.
    Tidal power is also good because it is predictable, if you are going to have a significant proportion of alternative energy (as one would hope to relieve independace form overseas if nothing else) then when the power outputs drops (the clouds come over etc). You need to replace this power with something like gas which needs to be quick to start up and always ready. The predictability of the tide allows the load balancing to be better managed so less gas needs to be used.
  • Hopefully, if this works, we could have the Severn Barrage back on the agenda. Build that thing and we could power Bristol and Cardiff and have enough left over to run half of Somerset, all without a single mole of CO2...

    • Re:Now there's some good news. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by canthusus ( 463707 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @02:10AM (#6220531)
      Hopefully, if this works, we could have the Severn Barrage back on the agenda

      No.

      The Severn Barrage is not a very environmentally friendly way of generating power, and would destroy hundreds of square miles of coastal and estuarine ecosystem.

      The whole point of the underwater turbines is that there is very little impact on the ecosystem, or the atmosphere, or on "visual amenity". The only adverse effects I can think of are disturbance at the time of construction, and possible underwater noise (disturbing any cetaceans).

      Looks like a truly great development - I really hope it proves successful.

      • And, it's a shipping hazard, if the outer extents of the blade path aren't marked clearly... Imagine the damage an 11 meter blade could do to a fishing vessel.

        There have been proposals to put a tidal energy turbine in Dodd's narrows between Vancouver Island and Mudge Island, but this route is often used by small craft. When they catch the tide going the right direction, they can greatly cut down on the travel time. Probably wildlife uses the same technique.
    • Yes, and if they built new nuclear powerstations at Berkeley, Oldbury and Hinckley Point they could power a hell of a lot more too without producing any CO2. Not that I'm bitter about the decline of the Bristish nuclear industry or anything...

  • Weather patterns (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asdfx ( 446164 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @08:44PM (#6219213) Homepage
    I'm curious as to what the long term effects of this would be. Indeed, there is a whole hell of a lot of water, but if this were our primary power source and there were hundreds or even thousands around the globe, what might be the outcome? If, for example, we were capable of decreasing the average wave height by 1" (which is completely arbitrary because I know too little about wave patterns :-p), that would probably lead to a change in wind patterns. This would, in turn, affect general weather patterns.

    Although, I suppose this is more of a wind power thing. I'm not confident that this could be catastrophic. More of a hypothetical. ::shrug::
    • What is the difference? We are already altering the earth with poisons. At least if we change the wether patterns, we can move.

    • Re:Weather patterns (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fluffy666 ( 582573 )
      For your next excercise in applied science, calculate the total energy contained in tidal water movement in the Bristol channel. Then compare it to the total energy output of all the UK's power stations..
    • I don't know what I'm talking about, but I've been raised on the fag end of the European philosophical bundle of irrationalism and skepticism, so I'm going to assume that because I can create a sentence about something happening, it might be possible. Aren't you the same guy who worried about ion engines "polluting" space? No?

  • No harm to fish?!? (Score:4, Informative)

    by isorox ( 205688 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @09:07PM (#6219356) Homepage Journal
    rotor blades fully under water and turning at about 20 rpm (so no harm to the fish).

    Erm, 11m blades, spinning arround, mean the outside of the blades travel 3.14*2*11*20/60 metres per second, thats about 50mph. I wouldnt want to be hit by one of them!

    • Re:No harm to fish?!? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think you might have gained an extra 2 - you want omega.r, not omega.d. Not that different in the end though - it's still ~25 mph, which I certainly wouldn't enjoy swimming through if I were a fish.

      • Re:No harm to fish?!? (Score:3, Informative)

        by mark2003 ( 632879 )
        It's not the speed of the balde that is important - rather the interval and the width of the blade. 20 RPM with two blades means a blade passes through any point every 1.5 seconds - it all depends if the fish can swim more than the width of the blade's cross-section in 1.5 seconds.

        Er... sounds like a fish blender to me!

        • You're assuming that the poor fish can see the blade coming in time to get out of the way - this is the north atlantic we're talking about. The fish wuold be lucky to see it 3 feet away.

      • 11m radius, so the outside travels 2(PI)r per revolution, or arround 70m. It does that every 3 seconds, so travels arround 25m/s, or 80kph, or 50mph.
        • I think that the entire blade is 11 m long, making the radius 5.5 m, thus 25 mph (41.5 kph).

          I suspect that the real reason for a low rate of fish kills is that, unlike hydro turbines, there is no suction produced by these systems. Thus, fish won't be sucked into them. At 20 rpm, the blades make one revolution every 3 seconds, leaving about a 1.5 second window for a fish that happens to swim into the path of the blade to get out of the way.

    • The fish can probably sense the spinning of the blade (with whatever the hell those special scales along their sides are called that let them sense movement in the water), so they'll probably just swim around them.
  • tidal powers in the channel (between Englan and Europe are quite strong, a mass of water moving has a lot more power than wind, i'd think. great idea, why didn't they do this a lot earlier? Also, this would be great to power remote sensing equipment, even quite power hungry devices. Way to go guys!
  • What do they mean no damage to views.

    What about the line of 50' tall bright yellow knob ends sticking out of the sea?

    slashnik

  • More information. (Score:3, Informative)

    by JaJ_D ( 652372 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @05:36AM (#6221062)
    The beeb have released a Real audio file here [bbc.co.uk]. May be of interest

    Jaj
  • Now if only they mixed this with a John West Tinning Factory, you'd get the whole mushed fish thing, and free power!

  • You'd think (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cackmobile ( 182667 ) on Wednesday June 18, 2003 @08:09AM (#6232315) Journal
    that with tidal power, solar, wind and hydro we could run this planet through renewable source. We just need some tough decisions. I would mind a row of wind turbines off the coast of sydney if it got rid of the smog that hangs over the city. Here in oz our roofs should be made of solar cells. We could probably get enough power out of them to run the whole house even in summer.

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