Underwater Kites Can Harness Ocean Currents to Create Clean Energy | Hacker News Reader

Underwater Kites Can Harness Ocean Currents to Create Clean Energy

blogs.smithsonianmag.com

31 pointsaronvox12 comments

This quote:

  “It has been estimated that the potential power from the
  Florida Current, which flows from the Gulf of Mexico into
  the Atlantic Ocean, is 20 gigawatts—equivalent to about 10
  nuclear power plants,” mechanical engineer David Olinger.

The scale of human industry is currently around 16 terawatts, so something on the scale of 20 gigawatts is a drop in the bucket. The solution to all of our energy needs this is not. That said, sure, deploy as many underwater kites as you profitably can without adversely affecting the environment; every little bit of power we generate renewably helps.

I'd be really amazed if this doesn't disrupt the environment - im just thinking of all those fish that will get affected - there's probably more effects in terms of how it affects currents and so on (if a large amount of these kites is put in a single area). Already you hear of wind turbines killing birds, affecting winds etc.

The UK and Ireland would be so pissed if we killed that current...so pissed...and so, so cold...

And presumably that 20 GW would require harnessing ALL the energy (e.g. bringing the current to a halt) - sounds suboptimal

I wonder what the unintended consequences of taking energy out of such currents would be to ocean wild life.

"The SeaGen S system at Strangford Lough was subject to a rigorous 3-year Environmental Monitoring Programme. The studies concluded that installation and operation of the SeaGen system, together with the mitigation put in place, has not had a significant impact on marine life at the site."

You can view the report here: http://www.marineturbines.com/sites/default/files/SeaGen-Env...

Yes, the potential and kinetic energy of the oceans is an amazing source of energy.

I hope a 'rigorous 3 year' testing program is sufficient to justify a large scale deployment of these platforms in different habitats. They do mention that 'a few' of the metrics monitored showed naturally highly variable and lacked the statistical power to confindently rule out undetected changes. Also, I have the impression that they just checked the deployment of one platform?

Did they also publish the data somewhere?

There's also 40South Energy in this space: http://www.40southenergy.com/wave-energy-converters/the-tech... (its founder was my linear algebra teacher).

More, uhm, sophisticated designs are already in deployment:

http://www.marineturbines.com/

I kinda like the underwater Enterprise fleet!

A physics puzzle: underwater turbines can generate energy from tides that are mostly the effect of the Moon movement. Energy can not be created (energy generated by the turbines needed to be lost somewhere). How the energy lost manifests itself in this system?

I do know that orbits gradually decay - maybe that is the 'energy reserve' we would be drawing down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave#Orbital_deca...

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