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"Completely harmless to marine life" seems optimistic. Changing the ecology by absorbing energy that is normally dissipated elsewhere, in weather patterns or nearby coastlines or water movements at slight oceanic depths, and blocking out some of the sunlight under the generator, may have only modest consequences. But "completely harmless to marine life" does not seem possible.
The hot air that obese grifter generates would provide enough power for the globe.
"Completely harmless to marine life" seems optimistic. Changing the ecology by absorbing energy that is normally dissipated elsewhere, in weather patterns or nearby coastlines or water movements at slight oceanic depths, and blocking out some of the sunlight under the generator, may have only modest consequences. But "completely harmless to marine life" does not seem possible.
"Completely harmless to marine life" seems optimistic. Changing the ecology by absorbing energy that is normally dissipated elsewhere, in weather patterns or nearby coastlines or water movements at slight oceanic depths, and blocking out some of the sunlight under the generator, may have only modest consequences. But "completely harmless to marine life" does not seem possible.
A net neutral or positive is a good-faith path to "completely harmless." If you block out a tiny bit of sun, but provide an artificial reef, the positive could balance or exceed the negative. Given the scale of the ocean, I am very skeptical anything man-made could disrupt waves in any meaningful way. There are some concerns about noise, but where I live, the waves are noisy! Time will tell, but this seems like the most optimistic green energy development I've seen in a long time. If these have long service lives, I imagine they'll be a net positive: giving artificial reefs, reducing erosion by a minuscule amount, and most importantly reducing emission output from the power plants they replace.
Indeed, we already build wave breaks and harbor walls that most definitively and intentionally affect the marine environment in order to create safe locations to dock and moor our vessels. And yet there's no hue-and-cry about that.
FFS, if we had your way, there would be NO power generation, this is minimal impact, you will be complaining next that solar cells suck the energy meant for algae.
Like damming rivers, this type of energy generation damages the local environment massively.
Like damming rivers, this type of energy generation damages the local environment massively.
False. You have not understood the technology. You have likely not even bothered trying to.
Time to grow up and stop with this fake green energy bullshit.
Time to grow up and stop with this fake green energy bullshit.
Time for you to grow up and stop with this ignorant dismissal of things you do not even understand.
This is almost as bad as solar panels soaking up all the sunlight, and windmills using up all the wind... ;)
There is a thing to that. Solar panels block sufficient sunlight to make desertification below the panels an actual problem. Windmills in the right locations (high on hilltops where concentrations of wind are higher due to nearby topology) likewise disturb the paths that birds and other low flying animals naturally follow and kill a higher concentration of them as a result.
Solar panels also block enough sunlight to make reversing desertification a viable option. It all comes down to details.
The biggest and most ubiquitous problem tends to come at installation time - very often the land is simply leveled as though to build a parking lot, killing all the native plants and animals in the area. That's hard to recover from.
Then, If your panels are mounted at ground level that desert will be maintained to keep plants from growing over/into the panels. And that, or an unbroken el
There is a thing to that. Solar panels block sufficient sunlight to make desertification below the panels an actual problem.
There is a thing to that. Solar panels block sufficient sunlight to make desertification below the panels an actual problem.
Only if your armchair is blocking the view of all the places where they're used to prevent desertification.
https://www.pv-tech.org/long-r... [pv-tech.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Oh, look, America is copying that one:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
There is no shortage of land where desertification is not a problem. For example: solar roofing over parking lots and large commercial structures. Nobody cares if the light hits the roof, and in fact it could lower cooling costs for the building the panels are installed on.
Solar panels block sufficient sunlight to make desertification below the panels an actual problem.
Solar panels block sufficient sunlight to make desertification below the panels an actual problem.
Desertification is caused by lack of rainfall, not lack of insolation. Shade creates opportunities for plants which cannot bear continuous direct sunlight, and the panels collect moisture through condensation and actually promote plant growth. I have seen both of these effects firsthand in a Northern California serpentine environment.
Windmills in the right locations (high on hilltops where concentrations of wind are higher due to nearby topology) likewise disturb the paths that birds and other low flying animals naturally follow and kill a higher concentration of them as a result.
Windmills in the right locations (high on hilltops where concentrations of wind are higher due to nearby topology) likewise disturb the paths that birds and other low flying animals naturally follow and kill a higher concentration of them as a result.
That was true of earlier generations of windmills. We made them bigger (thus slower) and painted one of the blades a different color, and now the birds can avoid them.
This type of energy generation will protect against coastal erosion slightly. There's no comparison to river dams.
Like damming rivers, this type of energy generation damages the local environment massively
Like damming rivers, this type of energy generation damages the local environment massively
There are a lot of places in the world where coastal erosion is a major problem. Using devices like this to capture the power of breaking waves would improve the local environment, rather than damaging it.
Yeah, because nuclear energy has never damaged any local environments massively.
It's a concrete box floating in the ocean with a turbine mounted on it. If you think that's damaging, you really don't want to know how the cheap shit you buy on Amazon gets to your door from a factory in China, and what that factory is doing to it's local environment.
Same link twice? Both useless. It does not give much information about the technology nor about the mentioned report, just "renewable blaa blaa" bullshit and images of Earth you can get from any commercial.
I want video about how the machine itself works, or table that compares different technologies.
That's one giant boat for basically a small generator.
It's not a boat, it's a big concrete box.
That's one giant boat for basically a small generator.
That's one giant boat for basically a small generator.
I think the boat is for the concrete blocks, not the generator.
The boat in production sites will probably detach and go back for the others.
Look like they messed up, and included the same old youtube link twice, and omitted the link to the actual article.
Thankfully, it wasn't hard to find -
https://newatlas.com/energy/bl... [newatlas.com]
Looking at the location where this is being tested, where there is a wave break wall close by, this looks like a great solution to use in such areas to both lessen the incoming wave energy, and harvest that energy.
If that small unit can generate 200kW, they only need another 30 of them to generate all the power that King Island uses (about 6GW), though obviously they would want to diversify their renewable generation sources so all their eggs aren't in one basket.
The Uniwave is 22m long by 14m wide, so that would be about 420m of them parked side by side, which looking at the size of it would be less than the length of the seawall that it's parked next to at Grassy harbor. https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
The additional shelter that they would provide should actually help support more marine life too. There's more details in the development application about the devices and where they were tested. https://kingisland.tas.gov.au/... [tas.gov.au]
I hope they can build and maintain these cost effectively. This trial version cost 12.3m, which makes it price out at $61/kw with an expected 20 year lifespan. They have a lot to do to get that cost down to compete with wind and solar, or fossil fuels. Hopefully they can build these modules in bulk and reduce the cost per unit with manufacturing at scale.
Actually I miscalculated. It's $61 per watt. Compared to nuclear which is about $5.40.watt, wind which is about $1.30/watt and solar which is about $0.61 per watt. of course wind and solar have a lower equivalent full time power rating than waves or nuclear, but even so it's a big gap.
I assume that 12.3m includes R&D for building the first one.
There's no way it should cost 12m each to build them in series, it's a block of concrete with a turbine at the top.
There's no way it should cost 12m each to build them in series, it's a block of concrete with a turbine at the top.
There's no way it should cost 12m each to build them in series, it's a block of concrete with a turbine at the top.
To be fair, it's a floating block of concrete with a turbine at the top. :-)
According to the video, his setup only passes air through the turbine as the water (inside the cavity) goes down. I saw another video where the turbine is powered by air moving in both directions. Apparently, this (the former) setup is simpler but, I'm guessing, generates less power. How much less I don't know, but imagine the reduced power generation is offset by simpler turbine design and maintenance.
To be fair, it's a floating block of concrete with a turbine at the top. :-)
To be fair, it's a floating block of concrete with a turbine at the top. :-)
I think it's actually resting on the sea floor and not floating.
The single action design would blow less salt spray through the turbine. Having less restriction on the upstroke would get a higher water column for the down stroke.
So I can see a couple of advantages to the single action design. How it plays out in practice is a good question.
I should have looked up all this info and put it in the one post but I keep finding more stuff... here's a great paper from CSIRO on projected cost per kw.
https://arena.gov.au/assets/20... [arena.gov.au]
On page 27 (with a nice graph) they seem to indicate that around a total cumulative capacity of about 1GW worth of total installations, the levelised cost/kw should be about where Solar and wind are at, and reduce further as even more is installed.
Those guys are a lot better at maths than me - here's hoping they got it righ
200kW is the peak power. Your link mentions 50kW as a more likely operating point, and the original article of the summary mentions 40kW.
The UniWave200 has a maximum output of 200 kW, but at the Grassy site it will produce an average of 50 kW
The UniWave200 has a maximum output of 200 kW, but at the Grassy site it will produce an average of 50 kW
(https://kingisland.tas.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/DA-2019-18-Wave-Energy-Converter-Grassy-Harbour.pdf [tas.gov.au], page 4)
"It's important to stress that the demonstration at King Island was not about producing high volumes of electricity," he responds. "Rather, it was to prove the capabilities of our technology in a variety of wave conditions. The results have met and at times exceeded our expectations. As an example, when the unit is generating 40 kW of power in reasonable wave conditions, you could extrapolate the amount of energy to be in the order of 1MWh in a 24 hour period."
"It's important to stress that the demonstration at King Island was not about producing high volumes of electricity," he responds. "Rather, it was to prove the capabilities of our technology in a variety of wave conditions. The results have met and at times exceeded our expectations. As an example, when the unit is generating 40 kW of power in reasonable wave conditions, you could extrapolate the amount of energy to be in the order of 1MWh in a 24 hour period."
(https://newatlas.com/energy/blowhole-wave-energy-generator/ [newatlas.com])
So it's more something like 2km of coastline for ~2000 inhabitants, which does not really scale that well. It's nice to turn seawalls into something that serves 2 purposes, but it's not going to solve any energy problem. As a comparison, in the Netherlands the coastal protection system length is ~350km long, so this system would provide electricity for ~350 000 Dutch people (although they may use less energy than Australians), or 2% of the population. Nice, but not game changing.
When to mention extrapolating for 24h generation, it sounds like they have not managed to run it continuously for 24h. Otherwise they would have said something like, in average it generates X MWh daily, or something like that.
you also miscalculated, it takes 30 THOUSAND of those to produce 6GW
you also miscalculated, it takes 30 THOUSAND of those to produce 6GW
Where did this 6GW number come from, there are only 1500 people on that island, are they all bit coin miners?
The average household uses 8000-10,000 kWh per year and rising due to increased demand for electric cars, electric heat etc. Businesses, factories (I'm assuming there's at least some fishery on the island) etc use a lot more.
This device reportedly can generate just 40 kW of power on average, basically if they find a way of storing the fluctuations, it could be a generator for 2 houses, they'll need 2 for a grocery store and about 5-10 for the local fishery. That gives us 2,000 of these contraptions at the v
Even if they scaled it up 2-5x (which would be hard, given the physics and it barely fits on a boat today)
Even if they scaled it up 2-5x (which would be hard, given the physics and it barely fits on a boat today)
It never goes on a boat anyway...
The UniWave is constructed of concrete with steel flotation pontoons. The unit will be built in Launceston and towed to the site near Grassy Harbour where the pontoons will be flooded and the unit will sink into position. The UniWave sits on the sea floor under its own weight of approximately 1000 tonnes.
I suspect there was a unit error in play. Basically the island doesn't consume an average of 6GW of instantaneous power, they consume 6GWh/year :
9,000kWh/year/household, assuming an average household size of two, translates to about 7GWh/year total. That's in the right ballpark, and with only 1500 people I doubt they have a lot of additional heavy industry.
The alternative, that they *do* consume 6GW, would mean they consume 6e6*365*24/1500 = 35GWh/year/person, or about 8,000x more than normal. They'd have
I hope they can build and maintain these cost effectively.
I hope they can build & maintain them in an ecologically sound way. Lining the coasts of the USA (or the world) with what are effectively large concrete blocks has got to have some impact....
You do know that sea walls, jettys, and other coastal erosion protection is built all the time, right? Using concrete and large quarried rock?
These could easily be integrated into those efforts to still manage coastal erosion, but also produce some clean energy at the same time.
Does King Island use 6 GW or 6 MW? 30 X 0.2.MW is not 6000 MW.
The article left out how they level the pulses. Reciprocating steam engines used a big flywheel. Electrically you use a capacitor. How slow can the waves be before the output starts pulsing too much?
It's the best wave energy gadget I've seen yet. It at least tries to keep the moving parts out of the salt water/sand/barnacles.
Man those random word salad generators are getting out of hand...
Oh. Is that what triggered you. Well, if you don't know what certain words mean, then I can imagine that not meaning much to you. Kind of the definition of not knowing what words mean, you know.
I thought it was something attached to whales and dolphins
Because clearly the 100th one will cost exactly the same as the first one, right?
Does your simplistic 2nd grade multiplication hold for literally any other generation source, or are you just taking a mondo deuce on this because... reasons? Do you think that things just might get cheaper as we build more of them after the proof-of-concept prototype?
Don't you think that something like this could get integrated into other sea wall and jetty construction already planned for coastal erosion and harbor protectio
Let's just cut to the chase and install wind turbines in front of the well in the US House of Representatives - there's more than enough hot air being expelled during floor speeches to offset a decent percentage of the DC Metro area's energy usage. And it would have the added effect of drowning out the actual speech being made with the low frequency vibrations made by the turbine.
If you have a turbine driven from the air inside the column, then the turbine will be ingesting a lot of water spray. Air drawn back into the column should be a lot dryer.
Also: Resistance on the inflow means the chamber will be receiving some positive buoyancy on each inflow, I wonder if part of this design is to help prevent this box from slowly migrating like an unbalanced washing machine.
Couldn't they use two unidirectional turbines, so they take advantage of both directions, while keeping the turbines simple? I suppose for demonstration purposes, it's cheaper to have one turbine, but for production use, two turbines could double the output, while sharing the rest of the structure.
Couldn't they use two unidirectional turbines, so they take advantage of both directions, while keeping the turbines simple? I suppose for demonstration purposes, it's cheaper to have one turbine, but for production use, two turbines could double the output, while sharing the rest of the structure.
You wouldn't actually need two turbines per unit if you're building them in a line. The turbines could be placed between the blowholes, with alternating turbines being driven by vacuum and compressed air, which is contributed by both units adjacent to the turbines. That way you'd only need one turbine per unit, plus one.
Or - hear me out on this one - OR maybe we don't have to rely solely on this one technology. Or any one technology.
Maybe this kind of contraption could be part of a larger strategy where we employ multiple technologies to create a diverse ecosystem of renewable energy that is ultimately more robust, as each technology's strengths cover the other's weaknesses.
So maybe saying things like "we'd need [extreme thing that is clearly absurd] to meet demand" just makes you look like an asshole and an idiot. Maybe. =Smidge=
I've read this story as well when it made the rounds but the total lack of details makes it highly suspicious to me that this is a real issue and not just hand-wringing over nothing / click-bait.
71% of the planet is covered by oceans, much of which have water-eroded sand at the bottom. I'd guess the amount of water-eroded sand humans have ever used is a tiny fraction of a percent of the planet's total. Maybe some areas are running out of easily-accessible sand - but where there's demand there's always a way
I've seen tests with carbone nanotubes and the resulting strength was insane.
I've seen tests with carbone nanotubes and the resulting strength was insane.
I'm guessing the insane strength was much less insane than the price.
You could do it without sand by using seacrete, and as a bonus, it reduces oceanic acidification by pulling carbon directly out of the water. All you need to make a seacrete structure is a metal cage and an electric current (and of course, the sea.) It's commonly done with alternator-based windmills made out of junk.
That's a pretty neat idea. It'd be cool if you could "grow" these in place without needing to import concrete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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