Scotland making tidal power productive?

Seeker:
A company in Scotland on Thursday announced it set the world record for producing electricity from the natural undulation of the ocean in the latest advance for a clean power source that’s still in its infancy.

Tidal power uses massive, submerged turbines that function as underwater windmills to produce electricity, pivoting into the current and spinning as the tide goes in and out.

The technology takes advantage of the daily shift in sea levels caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, sun, and rotation of Earth, which can make tidal energy more predictable than wind or solar. Because water is over 800 times more dense than air, tidal energy rotors can also be significantly more compact than those used for wind turbines, which have diameters up to 300 feet.

The company, Atlantis Resources Limited, produced over 700 megawatt hours in August at its flagship underwater MeyGen production site, located in the Pentland Firth, a strait that separates the Orkney Islands from Caithness in the north of Scotland.

“August proved to be a world-record month, providing enough energy to power 2,000 Scottish homes from just two turbines,” said David Taaffe, director of project delivery at the MeyGen site.
...
Tides are much more pronounced in Maine than they are in Texas.  In Maine, it is not unusual to see tidal movements of 15 to 20 feet, whereas in Texas it is usually less than two feet unless there is a storm in teh Gulf of Mexico.   I could see how this might be productive in the Northeast US.  I Texas natural gas is probably a better bet.

Comments

  1. Maniac2:40 PM

    The University of Maine was provided grant money to pursue tidal power generation many years ago. Lots of money, free engineering from our best engineering college in Maine, lots of PR and excitement, only to land on the scrap heap of all the other alternative energy generation speculation initiatives. The private sector needs to pursue this, keep the government and their grants of our tax dollars and our children's future national debt out of it.

    http://bangordailynews.com/2017/03/21/business/bad-waterproofing-kept-pioneering-maine-tidal-project-off-the-grid/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more