Harnessing the Sea for Electricity

For John, BLUF:  Engineering innovation to solve problems.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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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.