Underwater Turbine Spins 6.5 Years Off Scotland's Coast, Proving Viability of Tidal Energy (apnews.com) 57
An underwater turbine has been spinning for more than six years "to harness the power of ocean tides for electricity," reports the Associated Press. The long-running turbine (off the coast of Scotland) has now proven the commercial viability of the technology:
Keeping a large, or grid-scale, turbine in place in the harsh sea environment that long is a record that helps pave the way for bigger tidal energy farms and makes it far more appealing to investors, according to the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. Tidal energy projects would be prohibitively expensive if the turbines had to be taken out of the water for maintenance every couple of years.
Tidal energy technologies are still in the early days of their commercial development, but their potential for generating clean energy is big. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, marine energy, a term researchers use to refer to power generated from tides, currents, waves or temperature changes, is the world's largest untapped renewable energy resource.
This long-running tidal energy project off the coast of Scotland has four 1.5-megawatt turbines — enough to power 7,000 homes for a year, according to the article. But they plan to add 20 turbines in 2030 ("after needed upgrades to the electricity grid are finished"), and the site "could eventually hold as many as 130 turbines that are more powerful than those at the site today."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
Tidal energy technologies are still in the early days of their commercial development, but their potential for generating clean energy is big. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, marine energy, a term researchers use to refer to power generated from tides, currents, waves or temperature changes, is the world's largest untapped renewable energy resource.
This long-running tidal energy project off the coast of Scotland has four 1.5-megawatt turbines — enough to power 7,000 homes for a year, according to the article. But they plan to add 20 turbines in 2030 ("after needed upgrades to the electricity grid are finished"), and the site "could eventually hold as many as 130 turbines that are more powerful than those at the site today."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
Re: if u want 2 kill dolphins (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking this could work well at the golden gate. The water is deep enough that most fish and all boats can pass with no issue. On the other hand the planning time and cost would be 10-100x because of the environmental concerns red tape. Just like it can cost a fortune to add just a public toilet in SF.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/new... [nbcbayarea.com]
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https://uk.whales.org/2023/02/... [whales.org]
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Are you blind? Solar suffers great Nimbyism as soon as you put more than a couple of panels in one place. There's an especially big push back against solar farms in country towns.
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Whereas with, say, nuclear, there are a significant number of people who just don't think it should be done anywhere, whether or not it's within 100 miles of them. Same with oil. Same with coal.
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Can you point at such protests for "more than a couple of panels" ? I can find campaigns against 1100 ha in UK https://blockeastpyesolar.co.u... [blockeastpyesolar.co.uk] with a total area of 15 square miles. Not exactly a backyard.
I can find protests in Spain against a solar farm spanning 200 ha (495 acres) https://www.theolivepress.es/s... [theolivepress.es] . Again this is not a "not in my backyard" argument in the sense "I don't like the view". This is INSTEAD OF their backyard, farm and arable land. Right now 70 families are facing expropriation
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I have no doubt that you are correct, but I'm laughing thinking about how if my family's farmland was converted to solar, the region's rather conservative-leaning neighbors having a cry, when adjacent sections of the highway are already in use by a state prison, and a huge RV dealership and service center.
Pretty sure the prison isn't going to give a fuck if someone "ruins their view" of endless fields of grains / seed crops and corn, as the 100 acre RV lot kind of already did that. That wouldn't stop peopl
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The nuclear fanatics are protesting solar power as it violates the beliefs of their cult.
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Nope. But you just demonstrated that you are not in possession of a working mind. Well done!
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I got turned away from nuclear after I read the TMI accident report. They were incredibly lucky there and massively, grossly incompetent. And these days even the claims of being commercially viable are clear and direct lies.
Now if you want to compare that approach to what the MAGAs do, feel free. But do not expect any respect for that.
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these days even the claims of being commercially viable are clear and direct lies.
...I find it amusing that a liar is calling others liars. That's lying quared.
Nothing - NOTHING - beats Nuclear's energy density. Given operational lifespan and energy delivery, nuclear remains a core base-load requirement for any push to "green" energy. Anyone denying this is a lunatic or delusional.
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You mean the pro-oil fanatics? They're scary as they'd rather stare at abandoned oil derelicts then a wind mill and expect us tax payers to put out another $30-40 billion to build them a pipeline while refusing to finish the power inter-connect and cosying up to Trump.
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Site C, they're cleaning up the camps and such now with questions like whether to use the camp accommodations for housing or bin it.
Guess we could be more like China and not give a shit about things like pollution. Used to have air you could easily see here, it was not healthy.
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The nuclear fanatics are protesting solar power as it violates the beliefs of their cult.
Somebody is indulging in cult-like emoting here, lol
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Could you get even less impressive in your primitive, unreflected, passive-aggressive "response"? I doubt it.
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I can't think of any protests against solar in general. Although I'm sure there must have been some conflict about developing particular sites, same as if they were going to build apartments or anything else.
Surprise!
But we don't want wind and we don't want solar because they're a blight on our country. They hurt our country very badly and smart countries don't use it.
https://www.rev.com/transcript... [rev.com]
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The BANANA people.
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
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I can't think of any protests against solar in general.
It's usually from people who don't like the idea that solar power companies should be allowed to shove their power onto a system regardless of stability issues and the refusal to make investments to mitigate the interconnection costs [wikipedia.org].
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It will definitely attract protesters, just like every other energy source.
https://uk.whales.org/2023/02/... [whales.org]
It will definitively attract naysayers https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa... [duckduckgo.com]
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It will definitely attract protesters, just like every other energy source.
My FB feed is full of anti-solar, pro-petroleum memes. "Wind Turbines use oil, that somehow means they're worse than gas-cars!", "Solar panels give babies cancer!", "Mining vehicles destroy entire mountains to produce a sugar-cube's worth of rare earths!"...that sort of thing. A lot of the memes are fairly obvious trolls, but lots of dum dums fall for them anyway. I wouldn't go as far as to say these are protestors like you're thinking of, but are there those that oppose anything? Yep, just like you
Tides change but are predictable (Score:5, Informative)
Like wind turbines there is a minimum flow required to get power generation and there is a maximum flow limit.
I found this article informative: A standardised tidal-stream power curve, optimised for the global resource https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
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There is this bizarre paper [google.com] that claims to "show how extracting tidal energy could lead to environmental destruction in a relatively short period". The argument is that if just 1% of global energy demand is met through tidal power the Earth's rotation will slow so much in 1000 years that it will be tidally locked with the Moon (i.e. rotating at about once a month instead of once a current day).
If this seems hard or impossible to believe, you are right. Two fallacies are used here to make this conclusion.
Fir
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BTW there is an odd thing about population projections. Around 2000 most long-term demographic projections ran 100 years, to 2100. Now 25 years later they still mostly end in 2100, now only a 75 year frame. It is as if no one wants to bother with 100 year projections any more. In another 25 years will we be down to making only 50 year projections?
There's a Game of Thrones joke to be made here. Something about grousing for the author to get off his duff and start writing already.
Good (Score:5, Informative)
This was mostly a material-science issue, with turbines deteriorating too fast in the past. Ideas and prototypes have been done for several decades, AFAIK.
The good thing is that energy generation is entirely predictable with this scheme and storage is only needed for a few hours to compensate.
HOLD UP! (Score:2)
BUUUUT what about when it's too cloudy for the moon to move the water?! CHECKMATE! /s
I'm glad to see serious progress in this area as we need all the clean energy we can get.
Confused (Score:2)
> enough to power 7,000 homes for a year
Does this mean "enough to power 7,000 homes while the turbines are in operation", or does it mean "6.5 years of energy generated by this infrastructure will power 7,000 homes for a year"?
If the latter, why now "will power over 1,000 homes while in operation"? That'd be a simpler way to say the same thing and to boot would include a round number.
Scotland's Energy Production (Score:2)
Build up to a thousand of these and the Jocks can declare independence from those barbarians in England.
Scotland already produces about 97% of its energy from renewable sources [scottishrenewables.com].
enough to power 7,000 homes for a year (Score:2)
The four 1.5-megawatt turbines die after a year?
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> enough to power 7,000 homes for a year
Does this mean "enough to power 7,000 homes while the turbines are in operation", or does it mean "6.5 years of energy generated by this infrastructure will power 7,000 homes for a year"?
If the latter, why now "will power over 1,000 homes while in operation"? That'd be a simpler way to say the same thing and to boot would include a round number.
In order to get a job in journalism, you are required to fail a test, showing you have no clue how units work in physics.
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where almost nothing has been done to determine the long term environmental and climatic impact of large-scale, mass deployments?
You do realise small scale implementation is to gauge feasibility of these tidal-based generators, including environmental impact, as opposed to say, coal fueled generation plants, which have been spewing particulates and higher levels of CO2 into the air for several decades now?
When it comes to wind turbines, the numbers of birds impacted are blown waaaaay out of proportion.
Nor has any thought been expended on how taking energy out of the prevailing winds might prevent the prevailing winds from doing what prevailing winds are supposed to do.
Maybe not, however with the increasing temperatures caused through CO2 based climate change, any energy pulled from the atmosphere
Let's go to the blackboard, kids (Score:2)
7000 / 4 = 1750. So one turbine can power 1750 homes. Currently, there are approximately 2.5 million homes in Scotland. 2.5 million / 1750 ~= 1428. You'd need more than 1400 of these to power every home in the country. The plan is to build 130. What can we conclude from this?
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What can we conclude from this?
That they're not trying to solve all of Scotland's domestic energy use in one go.
Re: Let's go to the blackboard, kids (Score:2)
Perfect being the enemy of good enough.
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Cue the fossil fuel shills. "Let's do the math" is the new "I'm just asking questions." It’s not analysis—it’s misdirection. The point of the MeyGen project isn't to power all of Scotland with four turbines. It’s to prove the tech works well enough to scale. And after six years in a brutal marine environment? It does.
7000 / 4 = 1750. So one turbine can power 1750 homes.
Correct. That’s the project’s current per-turbine capacity, based on real-world, in-water operation. Not a lab estimate. So far, so good.
2.5 million / 1750 ~= 1428. You'd need more than 1400 of these to power every home in the country.
Also correct—
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The plan is to build 130. What can we conclude from this?
None of them will block the view from Trump International golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland?
(History: Trump claimed an 11-turbine off-shore wind farm blocked the view from his golf course, sued, lost and was ordered to pay $290,000 (U.S.) in legal fees, that he, of course, initially refused to do, then did (as far as I can tell). Google: trump golf Scotland wind farm [google.com].)
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Simply doing a blackboard calculation isn't enough, you need to look at some empirical facts as well. These show that 97% of Scotland's electricity [scottishrenewables.com] already comes from renewables.
Also produces ... (Score:2)
please stop mixing units (Score:2)
megawatts is a unit of power
powering homes for a year is a unit of ENERGY. (describing megawatt-hours)
If you're comparing those units directly, you don't understand electricity. Like, "your car gets 25 miles per gallon, but I drove MY car 200 miles last week". The comparison doesn't make sense, and you can't draw any conclusions from it.
Units again! (Score:2)
has four 1.5-megawatt turbines — enough to power 7,000 homes for a year
One again this statement is so nonsensical that I'm not going to point out the error this time.
Fucking reporters. Idiots.
not constant power (Score:2)
Tidal velocity peaks 4 times a day and drops to zero 4 times a day, so " four 1.5-megawatt turbines — enough to power 7,000 homes for a year, according to the article" is hiding the fact that the average power is less than half of 6 MW, and 4 times a day will be zero. Not much use is it? OK, you can add batteries, that increases system cost.
The average house uses 10 kWh per day, so 7000 homes need 70 MWh per day, and if they average 3 MW for 24h and have battery storage that just squeaks in.
Next prob