Saturday, March 14, 2015

Harnessing the Sea for Electricity


For John, BLUFEngineering 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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