For John, BLUF: Engineering innovation to solve problems. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Quartz has an item by Contributor Cassie Werber on an alternative energy project to be installed in the Welsh city of Swansea. The headline is "A run-down Welsh city plans to power its homes by harnessing the tides".♠
This is the key paragraph:
The plan is to construct the first power station in the world based on a man-made tidal lagoon. A seawall of dredged sand, armored with rock, would enclose 11.5 square kilometers of sea. One stretch of wall contains 16 turbines, eight meters♥ in rotor diameter. Gates allowing water to flow through the turbines are opened once a disparity has been achieved between the height of the water inside the lagoon and outside it–or four times a day, once in each direction for high and low tide.I wonder what the impact is on aquatic life? No solution comes without new problems. That said, this seems like a good step forward, and in many ways like our own electricity generation off the Merrimack River here in Lowell.
Regards — Cliff
♠ If you see an advertisement on your screen when you click the link, scroll down.
♥ For the non-French amongst us, that would be 26 and a quarter feet.
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