Wave Powered Generator
PvtBones
Join Date: 2004-04-25 Member: 28187Members
Join Date: 2004-04-25 Member: 28187Members
in Discussions
found this while surfing, I think the possibilities with this thing could be endless
<a href='http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2005-05-20T120138Z_01_L20492181_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENERGY-PORTUGAL-WAVEPOWER-DC.XML' target='_blank'>wave powered generator</a>
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OSLO (Reuters) - A Scottish company will deploy sausage-shaped tubes off Portugal to create the world's first commercial wave power plant, providing electricity to 1,500 homes from 2006, a partner in the Scottish firm said on Friday.
Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) will build the wave farm about five kilometers (3.1 miles) off Portugal's northern coast, near Povoa de Varzim, OPD's Norwegian backer Norsk Hydro said.
OPD will deliver three wave power generation units with capacity of 2.25 megawatts to Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis for 8 million euros ($10.12 million), but the project could be expanded significantly, Norsk Hydro said.
OPD's Pelamis P-750 wage energy converter is an elongated metal unit that looks like a big semi-submerged sausage, with hinged segments that rock with the sea, up and down and side to side, pumping fluid to hydraulic motors that drive generators.
The power produced by the generators is fed into underwater cables and brought to land where it enters the power grid.
A 120-meter (394-foot) long prototype has been tested since February 2004 in the Orkney Islands. Norsk Hydro, the energy and aluminum group, owns 16 percent of OPD.
"The farm will...displace more than 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise be produced by conventional hydrocarbon-fueled power plants," Hydro said. Carbon dioxide is the main gas widely blamed for global warming.
The deal with Enersis includes a letter of intent for a further 30 Palamis wave machines for a total of 20 megawatts before the end of 2006, subject to satisfactory performance by the initial installation, Hydro said.
"If all goes well, many additional sites producing up to a total several hundred MW could be developed along the coast," Norsk Hydro said.
"We see this order as just the first step in developing the Portuguese market, which is anticipated to be worth up to a billion euros over the next 10 years," OPD Managing Director Richard Yemm said in the statement.
OPD is also in talks with Scottish Power, which has shown interest in installing a wave farm in the UK, Hydro said.
The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010. Renewables currently meet about six percent of European demand, Hydro said.
Enersis is a unit of Portuguese cement company Semapa.
Norsk Hydro's partners in Edinburgh-based OPD are investors Sustainable Asset Management, the Carbon Trust and 3i plc. The firm also has financial support from the UK energy ministry.
($1=.7906 Euro) <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href='http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2005-05-20T120138Z_01_L20492181_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENERGY-PORTUGAL-WAVEPOWER-DC.XML' target='_blank'>wave powered generator</a>
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OSLO (Reuters) - A Scottish company will deploy sausage-shaped tubes off Portugal to create the world's first commercial wave power plant, providing electricity to 1,500 homes from 2006, a partner in the Scottish firm said on Friday.
Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) will build the wave farm about five kilometers (3.1 miles) off Portugal's northern coast, near Povoa de Varzim, OPD's Norwegian backer Norsk Hydro said.
OPD will deliver three wave power generation units with capacity of 2.25 megawatts to Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis for 8 million euros ($10.12 million), but the project could be expanded significantly, Norsk Hydro said.
OPD's Pelamis P-750 wage energy converter is an elongated metal unit that looks like a big semi-submerged sausage, with hinged segments that rock with the sea, up and down and side to side, pumping fluid to hydraulic motors that drive generators.
The power produced by the generators is fed into underwater cables and brought to land where it enters the power grid.
A 120-meter (394-foot) long prototype has been tested since February 2004 in the Orkney Islands. Norsk Hydro, the energy and aluminum group, owns 16 percent of OPD.
"The farm will...displace more than 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise be produced by conventional hydrocarbon-fueled power plants," Hydro said. Carbon dioxide is the main gas widely blamed for global warming.
The deal with Enersis includes a letter of intent for a further 30 Palamis wave machines for a total of 20 megawatts before the end of 2006, subject to satisfactory performance by the initial installation, Hydro said.
"If all goes well, many additional sites producing up to a total several hundred MW could be developed along the coast," Norsk Hydro said.
"We see this order as just the first step in developing the Portuguese market, which is anticipated to be worth up to a billion euros over the next 10 years," OPD Managing Director Richard Yemm said in the statement.
OPD is also in talks with Scottish Power, which has shown interest in installing a wave farm in the UK, Hydro said.
The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010. Renewables currently meet about six percent of European demand, Hydro said.
Enersis is a unit of Portuguese cement company Semapa.
Norsk Hydro's partners in Edinburgh-based OPD are investors Sustainable Asset Management, the Carbon Trust and 3i plc. The firm also has financial support from the UK energy ministry.
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Comments
Plus, how much power does it produce? Not in numbers like those above as that really doesn't mean anything to me I'm afraid. How much power does it produce in comparison to the more common versions of generators available and in terms of money is it as effecient as the others?
Not putting a dampener (ho ho) on it as I think it could be great, I just can't help but feel that if it really was a truly viable alternative then it would be a lot more common. I had this idea when I was about 7, I'm pretty sure others have too.
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Yes, East the wave powered machines are high maintence because salt water isn't exactly hospitable to metal.
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Plus, how much power does it produce? Not in numbers like those above as that really doesn't mean anything to me I'm afraid. How much power does it produce in comparison to the more common versions of generators available and in terms of money is it as effecient as the others?
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Assuming reliable tides and/or ocean currents. Which is never a guarntee.. I shall elaborate.
There are essentially two ways off extracting power from the movement of the seas:
1. Using wave action (primarily caused by winds) and, therefore, not fully reliable;
2. Using the movement of the tides which, although it varies(in strenght), is regular and reliable.
The generator is quoted(above article) as designed for 1/2 megawatt, but again details are not given. Windmills are now moving towards 3 megawatts and higher, this design also relies on air pressure. Solar Cells produce about...10 megawatts it depends on how large of a field and how sunny it is.. duh. Nuclear power is rated at (fission since fusion isn't has efficent (more power needed to start the reaction then is given off)) for a mid size one based on uranium 600 megawatts.
Current fossil fuel power plants are rated at 200-250 depends on what fuel (oil, coal, natural gas) and how large the plant is. There are some exceptions, example there are a couple of nuclear power plants in france that produce well over 1000 megawatts, and some fossil fuel ones (natural gas) produce around 640. Size really does matter in this department at the moment.
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Not putting a dampener (ho ho) on it as I think it could be great, I just can't help but feel that if it really was a truly viable alternative then it would be a lot more common. I had this idea when I was about 7, I'm pretty sure others have too.
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Agreed East.
I'd also like to point out that even though this would work for smaller communites,(under 5,000 people) almost none of the major cities of the world will be able to effectively use this technology.
I personally say our best bet would be go research fusion more, for that is obviously quite abaundant on this planet (H2O anyone?) and if it can be perfected soon things will go smoothly, not to mention even if the core reaches extreme temperatures (like the fission ones have before) all that happens is the helium fuses to become beryllium and then carbon, and so on down the line untill the reaction stops.
Thanks for those numbers Cyndane, I guessed this would be fairly inefficient but it's nice to know exactly how much. Fusion is definitely my highest hope for the future, lets all keep our fingers crossed eh?
I'm not sure if the salt water/metal concern is that important though. I know if I had to design one the last thing I'd do is leave open metal in the water. Plastic coatings and sealent are relatively cheap nowadays, it would still need a lot of maintenence though as the ocean can wear down almost anything if given the chance.
antimatter is a joke as both fuel [it's not an energy source either, because we have to make it] and for weapons.
it takes far too much energy to create and it doesn't release enough because we can't make enough. CERN said they could maybe light a few lightbulbs for a few minutes with all the antimatter they've made.
1. it's not an energy source, we have to make it so its always an net energy loss when used
2. it needs particle accelerators with tons of energy to make even enough to "power a lightbulb"
even though it could theoretically be used for war, which we're always so damn happy to get better at, the energy required for even a small weapon would be astronomical. we'll just stick with thermnuclear warheads for the forseeable future.
as for fusion, eh, we've got a long time to get it right if we'd flipping move to nuclear fission for power but people can't get over OMG ATOMS WILL KILL US ALL
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Its even more so then our latest fusion attempts... although a recent try by the US did cause a consistant 500megawatt output bonus, we created 500 more megawatts then were used up during creation, still weak but getting better<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
...then we're closer than I thought. If we could sustain those numbers, that would be plenty--500 Megawatts is a very respectable number for a power plant.
<a href='http://www.nuklearpower.com' target='_blank'>Nuclear power</a> FTW!!
(ok...admittedly, that site has nothing to do with nuclear power...it just has a similar name, and I happen to like it.)
You never know, perhaps we may be able to refine the technology enough so that even antimatter can be quickly and safely harvested for later use. I am referring to hundreds of years from now.
Cxwf: Yes, 500 megawatt is quite good, however the intial power input of the generator was well up above 850 megawatts, which is why they scrapped the lasers and that project. I know Japan is working on a fusion reactor, but I have yet to see them demostrate is operational ability.
Comparing fission and fusion:
The natural product of the fusion reaction is a small amount of helium, which is completely harmless to life and does not contribute to global warming. Of more concern is tritium, which, like other isotopes of hydrogen, is difficult to retain completely. During normal operation, some amount of tritium will be continually released. There would be no acute danger, but the cumulative effect on the world's population from a fusion economy could be a matter of concern. The 12 year half-life of tritium would at least prevent unlimited build-up and long-term contamination.
The large flux of high-energy neutrons in a reactor will make the structural materials radioactive. The radioactive inventory at shut-down may be comparable to that of a fission reactor, but there are important differences. The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Furthermore, there are fewer different species, and they tend to be non-volatile and biologically less active. As opposed to nuclear fission, where there is hardly any possibility to influence the spectrum of fission products, the problems can be further reduced by careful choice of the materials used. "Low activation" materials like vanadium, for example, would become much less radioactive than stainless steel. Such materials would have half-lives of tens of years, rather than the thousands of years for radioactive waste produced from fission. This involves the design of new alloys with unusual chemical compositions; a complex process as the chemical composition also affects the materials' mechanical properties.
Japans efforts:
Inertial confinement produces plasmas with impressive densities and temperatures, and appear to be best suited to weapons research, X-ray generation, very small reactors, and perhaps in the distant future, spaceflight. They rely on fuel pellets with a "perfect" shape in order to generate a symmetrical inward shock wave to produce the high-density plasma, and in practice these have proven difficult to produce. A recent development in the field of laser induced ICF is the use of ultrashort pulse multi-petawatt lasers to heat the plasma of an imploding pellet at exactly the moment of greatest density after it is imploded conventionally using terawatt scale lasers. This research will be carried out on the (currently being built) OMEGA EP petawatt and OMEGA lasers at the University of Rochester and at the GEKKO XII laser at the institute for laser engineering in Osaka Japan, which if fruitful, may have the effect of greatly reducing the cost of a laser fusion based power source.
An excellent place to start for learning about generators is one of the experiments in the US listed below. (It is a power point presentation, so IE 5.0 or above, or Firefox 1.0 or above required.)
<a href='http://www.ph.utexas.edu/%7Ephy315/Helimak.htm' target='_blank'>Helimark generator</a>
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Huh? Power plants burn a fuel which is already present, either coal, gas, or nuclear fission, antimatter has to be <b>created</b> so it cannot be used in a power plant, only, theoretically, as a fuel like hydrogen could be.
power plants always have to have a net energy gain, and that's impossible with anti-matter, unless we can start mining the stuff.
Couldn't a tidal generator be made mostly out of uh, plastic(?)...?
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Huh? Power plants burn a fuel which is already present, either coal, gas, or nuclear fission, antimatter has to be <b>created</b> so it cannot be used in a power plant, only, theoretically, as a fuel like hydrogen could be.
power plants always have to have a net energy gain, and that's impossible with anti-matter, unless we can start mining the stuff. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Coal (has to be mined and is not always present, energy time needed.)
Oil (drilled for and processed, which requires energy to do, if you wish to do it efficently.)
Natural Gas (Has to be drilled for and processed to remove impurities, again it is being created still.)
Nuclear fission (Uranium 238, or Plutonium also need to be reprocssed into rods of specific lenght and weight to make them reactor ready.)
Fusion (Little pellets of tritum, and deuterium creating a basic helium molecule, however releasing an extra proton to continue this reaction not to mention the huge amounts of energy needed to heat the possible plasma to begin the reaction)
Antimatter (pops in and out of existence naturally at the quantum level, would need to find some way to harvesting such small amouts (singular positrons))
Guess what?
They all need to be refined in order to heat the steam to turn the turbine generator. Some require large amounts of input energy to begin, fusion antimatter, however it could be done. It will take a while though. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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Antimatter (pops in and out of existence naturally at the quantum level, would need to find some way to harvesting such small amouts (singular positrons)) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
oh virtual particles, maybe, but i have to say it'd be one hell of a feat to be a viable energy source.
honestly i'd expect cold fusion before we start harvesting antimatter out of a vaccum, but it'd be awsome if we could do it.
I wish we could find a way to harvest them collectivly out of a vacuum but I agree, cold fusion would be more fesiable at the moment.
Not that either is actually possible, right now.
To be more precise--a few antimolecules could annihilate a few normal molecules, but the process of annihilation would produce a very large explosion. And it wouldn't take very much antimatter to make that explosion powerful enough to rip a planet apart. However, I can't claim to know precisely how much "not very much" is in this case--might be a few molecules, might be a few grams, maybe even a pound or two.
But worrying about natural antimatter explosions is even less rational than worrying about the nuclear threat--the natural production of antimatter consumes energy, in exactly the same quantity as is given off in the antimatter explosion (which tends to occur a small fraction of a second later). So in order for enough antimatter to spawn to create a sizeable explosion, the area would already have to have enough energy to create that explosion without the antimatter. So it really won't matter much.
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Although tritium can be a gas, its most common form is in water, because, like non-radioactive hydrogen, radioactive tritium reacts with oxygen to form water
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...I just can't help but feel that if it really was a truly viable alternative then it would be a lot more common.
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Wind turbines take more energy to create and sustain than they produce over their lifetime, yet some retard in the British government thinks it's a sensible way to meet our "renewable energy" needs. Plus the amount electricity they produce is shocking...