Here is a pretty interesting alternative energy source I had NEVER heard before:
One renewable energy resource that’s rarely discussed here, but is already being developed, is the moon. The moon’s gravity sends an almost unimaginable quantity of water sloshing back and forth between continents. It happens a couple of times each day and it’s called the tides. As any sailor who’s tried to beat home against a tidal current can tell you, the amount of energy involved is phenomenal.
There are already several tidal generation works around the world humming, or splashing, along and providing almost free electricity. Since most of our population lives near the coast, shouldn’t we considering developing moon, I mean tidal, power.
Read the whole thing. One obvious point of contention will be the resistance thrown up by opponents who worry about the damage this will have to the organisms who live near where these proiposed sites would be placed. I know little about whether it will impact their environment negatively, but I have to assume it will have an impact (although the piece says it will not). It is also not clear if their will be any side effect regarding coastal erosion, as well as any number of other issues (including whether it is cost effective).
Interesting, though, and precisely the sort of thing that should be explored in future energy legislation (if it has already and been rejected, let me know).
Lines
I participated in a few engineering round-tables about harnessing the energy of the tides, and its probably pretty doable. Some of the main issues to be addressed are the environmental impact to the surrounding life-forms, the erosion that changes sea-floor topographies at an alarming rate (for an engineer), and ability to maintain the system.
There are probably a lot of other issues to be resolved, but using tidal forces as a source of energy has been discussed quite regularly. Its recognized as one of the greatest forces upon the earth.
What surprises me is that this surprised you, John. Different educational circles and all that, I guess.
John Cole
Yeah- I have never covered this in any of my Nonverbal Communications or Interpersonal Communication courses.
Steve
Maybe it was brought up in Nonverbal Communications and you just didn’t hear it.
I wonder if this kind of thing would work in the Great Lakes. Michigan’s economy could finally rebound.
Jaybird
From what I understand, tide harnessers have a measurable slowdown effect on the spinning of the earth.
If I were going to be an environmentalist wacko, that’s the tack I’d take.
Clever
Another energy technology in the same vein: harnessing ocean waves
Somewhat similar to the tidal, but possibly much less enviromental impact. Has the same barrier of high initial cost. Still pretty interesting.
Cyrus
Well, any major construction, especially of a relatively new or uncommon type and therefore less refined, in a place that’s not already industrialized, will have environmental impacts. It’s stupid to not even consider and evaluate them, but few people (stupid coming from the other end) would veto a project on the grounds of that fact alone.
Also, it’s worth noting that this would be most effective the closer you get to the equator. That would affect how much people care about it – if they were digging up the coastline in Antarctica, few would notice – but on the other hand it might lessen the damage done, because most of that area already is industrialized and heavily populated. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I suppose.
Jaybird, do you have a cite for that? It sounds ridiculous to me if true, but then so does the concept of a President Bongo, so I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand…
Mr Furious
President Bush is calling for further study to determine if these “tides” actually exist…
Mr Furious
Bush also wants to know how you can “drill into a wave”, too. They won’t stay still.
demimondian
All snark aside, the problem with tidal energy is that it is hard to extract in significant amounts. Outside of the Bay of Fundy, the actual amount of water being moved at any given time *over a fixed area* is fairly small, and so it’s impractical to create an industrial scale power plant run by the tides.
David Janes
I just came across this link re: this subject which has some historical, economic and current usage notes:
http://www.poemsinc.org/FAQtidal.html
Horshu
There are a couple of interesting variations I’ve read about, depending more on just waves than the tides themselves. One is a wave farm where hundreds of miniature bouys (maybe a square mile) move up and down with the waves, generating constant power. The other is a giant lever, like a guitar pedal, that is underwater; it generates power as it rocks back and forth. The cool thing about both are that water has such a high mass & there is so much of it, it can generate an incredible amount of force, which translates to a decent amount of power. So the water may move up and down only a foot or so, but it is doing it constantly (although less at night) and with tremendous momentum (the bouyency can resist all it wants, but either it sinks or moves with the wave; the wave moves the same regardless of the counterforce)
Slartibartfast
This isn’t a new idea, and there are places in the world this is already being done. I believe there was an article on this in National Geographic circa 1976.
Another interesting and simple way of harvesting energy from the ocean is to use the temperature differential between surface water and deep water to drive…well, you could think of it as an engine that does the opposite of your heat pump. Heat differential in, power out. More on that here.
Mr Furious
Horshu’s suggestions seem so fucking logical and simple…Why wouldn’t that work?
Slartibartfast
Ah, I see David Janes and I found the same place. If only National Geographic had their archives online…
Now if only the tidal power generation could be adapted to use solid earth tides. Bet you didn’t know the ground under your feet moved up and down about a foot per day.
a guy called larry
Moon, Turn The Tides … Gently Gently Away
apostropher
Underwater turbines anchored to the seafloor are very promising and prototypes are in use already.
jg
Don’t they already have one of these in Scotland?
ppGaz
I guess I will play the cranky skeptic on the tidal thing.
I live in the desert, which has 300-plus days of relentless intense solar energy beating down on it. You’d think that “harnessing” nature’s energy sources would have started here. We have a big appetite for electricity (a few days here in July or August will demonstrate why that is) and all this solar energy flying around for free.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the local utility has just asked for a 20% rate increase mostly to cover increased fuel costs. They can’t drag the coal and pump the oil in fast enough around here. They can’t build these smoke-puffing power plants fast enough; there are 4 million people living in this valley now and no end to the growth is in sight.
My point is that a large part of the Southwest, and that could include Los Angeles and San Diego, could be getting power from the sun right now if the investments had been made in a timely fashion. So here we are almost in 2006 and I still don’t see those investments being made.
If we want to get riled up about something, here’s a place to start.
demimondian
The problem is simple: what you’re seeing here is capitalism at work.
Power generation is a purely margin driven business, characterized by vast startup costs payed for over time. The only cost that matters to a power company is the cost per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. Right now, there’s no way to make commercially significant amounts of electricity from solar or tidal energy. The various pilots are just that — pilots. Making them scale is always the problem, and until someone figures out how to do that, they’re interesting, but not important.
neil
No link, but I’ve read that harnessing tidal energy will accelerate the process of the moon leaving Earth’s orbits. Any astrophysicists out there?
Horshu
ppGaz: I think the real solution is regionalized, diversified power. Right now, we largely depend on fossil fuels (coal, etc) to generate power, and it’s a very centralized industry (oil is extracted from a number of sites worldwide from a few companies, refined, and sold; coal done similarly). However, all electricity is, at the end of the day, the same, so there should be no reason why coastal settlements shouldn’t be powered by tidal energy, deserts by solar, mountains by wind, throw nucular in there for the lobbyists. Ditto for ethanol as well; the US can produce grain/corn-derived fuel, Brazil can do beets or cane, small towns can build solar-heated stills, etc.
Diversified/decentralized power production would also have implications in the global political arena, as the grab for fuel becomes less dire.
Wake me when all this happens.
jg
When I first moved here I thought I would see tons of houses with solar panels or that I’d see acres of solar panels when flying in. But no. Ironically the power mostly comes from running water. In a desert. Dams everywhere.
KC
I see coastal erosion as the biggest problem. Trust me, in places like Malibu, etc., they would not be happy about the loss of the beaches. I mean, lets think about it: most of the folks who can afford to live on or near the beaches in California are pretty wealthy. Not the kind of people who would be comfortable with their views and beaches disturbed.
Slartibartfast
I’m not an astrophysicist, but I play one on TV. Harnessing tidal energy will NOT “accelerate the process of the moon leaving the Earth’s orbits”. It MIGHT cause the lunar orbit to decay outward a little more rapidly, but this means something quite a bit different. Plus, I doubt we could possibly get more than what amounts to a drop in the bucket of energy expended daily by the moon on the Earth, which is not only expended on the seas but also on the land. The lunar gravitational field elongates the Earth along a line connecting their centers of gravity, and that elongation goes through one complete cycle per day.
Which tends to slow the Earth’s rotation down, because the friction of the moving land and water acts as a brake on rotation. Eventually, we’ll reach equilibrium where the Earth and Moon present the same face to each other at all times. We’ll all be long fossilized by then, I imagine.
As is sometimes the case, there’s a really good Wiki on this subject. Short answer: the Moon will gain energy by sucking it out of the Earth (from the Earth’s rotational motion), and that energy transfer will asymptotically approach zero as the Earth’s rotation rate slows down. The amounts of energy involved here are truly staggering, though, and any we might happen to funnel off for our own use isn’t going to speed the process up by much.
Doug
Seems likely to me that the environmental impact of harnessing tidal forces would be offset by the reduction in pollution from burning fossil fuels.
Lines
There has also been at least theoretical ideas of using the heat generated by tectonic waves.
If I remember right, the moon is also what keeps the earth’s center molten, but I could be wrong on that
DougJ
There’s no sound science to prove that they do.
demimondian
Slartibartfast — you missed a great line here:
Don’t you mean that the amounts of energy involved are _literally astronomical_? I’ve waited all my life to see somebody use that phrase correctly, and you botched your chance, man…
Slartibartfast
Rough approximation, though: taking into account the Earth’s moment of inertia, and taking the amount of energy necessary reach equilibrium (tital lock) if you could extract maybe a million gigawatts via tidal energy generators is going to be in the trillions of years.
Slartibartfast
Actually, the opposite of literally, given that none of the energy is actually in the stars…
But yes, I probably botched a primo opportunity for a pun. Damnit.
demimondian
Actually, no. There’s certainly some tidal heating of the earth, but the Earth’s center is molten because of (wait for it) radioactive decay of Uranium.
Yes, boys and girls…geothermal energy is just repackaged nuclear energy.
Slartibartfast
That’s nukuler…nukuler.
Otherwise, correct.
Slartibartfast
(tital lock)
I guess my Freudian slip is showing. However…should have read: tidal lock.
DougJ
If the earth is 6000 years old, then how old is the moon? I’m not so up on wingnuttery as I used to be, so I don’t know the answer.
Gary Farber
Indeed. I don’t want to embarrass John, but I was reading Isaac Asimov essays, as well as those in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and Scientific American about tidal energy power plants literally before he was born. Which is to say, lots of people were.
Why, yes. And Moonbase Alpha will go with it! And then it might careen into Jupiter!
I rest assured that ancient astronauts will save us with a Hieronymous Machine, psi power, and cold fusion, though. My astrologer convinced me of this.
jobiuspublius
Sounds like a job for government.
demimondian
By “commercially significant”, I meant significant to customers. The situation isn’t in a place where we can build the plants. Supporting research is certainly a job for the government — except that since Reagan, the funding of alternative energy sources has been been broadly reduced.
wilson
Alternative forms of energy are not looking that promising. How about alternative ideas for conservation for the next centuries?
Why not develop man-plants, powered by photosynthesis – people then feed themselves from their plant side. Ultimately all we eat comes from solar energy. Building man/plants just makes the process more direct.
Plant and human DNA are not much different. If we can make animal/animal chimeras, why not animal/plant? Just make people green-skined, eh? Start with simple animal/plants and work our way up the ladder.
Long term, for transit, I see nuclear (to throw off hydrogen from electrolysis) taking a more central role.
Once we get to the singularity (machines as smart as humans) we need to assign some machines to think out good ways to recycle/detoxify/deweaponize nuclear waste, eh?
jobiuspublius
Lol, man-plants, very good wilson. An added benefit would be longevity, great strength, and a real hard woody skeleton.
Slartibartfast
And then we’d be subjected to images of Martin Landau in tight synthetic garments. NOOOOOOOO!