[HN Gopher] Remote Tasmanian island to be powered by 'blowhole' ...
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Remote Tasmanian island to be powered by 'blowhole' wave energy
Author : 8bitsrule
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-02-03 08:55 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| holoduke wrote:
| I wonder how to deal with the amount of organic material
| (seaweed, shells etc) that quickly covers all surface areas and
| reducing efficiency. Salt seawater is a difficult environment to
| have advanced equipment inside.
| medion wrote:
| Presumably with the same antifoul paints we use to protect
| large ocean going ships, which cannot be hauled like pleasure
| vessels every 12-18 months for re-application.
| tantalor wrote:
| https://youtu.be/2n1OteBN1iM?t=74 the design
| essentially mimics a natural blowhole a space has
| been made in the center which will prompt waves to go in
| rise and fall and move air up into the turbine which
| then converts into power
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| And here's another, hydraulic/compressor design developed in
| Israel in 2011 by Inna Bravermann (24 when she founded Eco Wave
| Power). The design is said to produce 1MW per $1MM. A pilot
| plant was installed on Gibraltar's coast in 2016; by 2018 it
| had 15,000 grid-connected hours. It now has projects around the
| world for over 100MW.
|
| Ted talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_OFBmqKP8E
|
| News page: https://www.ecowavepower.com/news-media/
| flavius29663 wrote:
| This seems so inefficient: you're transferring power from the
| moving water to moving air, but the air can be compressed. It
| must be losing a lot of it's power in that transfer alone. Plus,
| you get all the downsides of deploying a mechanism at sea:
| constant salt and stress.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Isn't that traditional? We lack most mechanisms of extracting
| power from sources. Like, even with nuclear radiation we insist
| on converting to steam generally.
|
| Some times an effective mechanism doesn't exist. Like how if I
| could, the ideal way to warm my home would be to just transmit
| power to a bubble around me and warm that, since the rest of
| the house doesn't need warming, but there is no pleasant way to
| do that so you use a couple of low efficiency ways:
|
| * heating the entire house
|
| * using lots of energy to grow plants for animals to eat so you
| can consume them so you can generate heat you can keep within
| insulation with a sweater
| rtkwe wrote:
| The compression is a good thing, it drives the power to the
| turbine in the first place and also acts like a spring so it'll
| smooth out the energy impulse from the waves.
|
| One of the big problems with other wave energy systems is the
| stress from waves is pretty peaky so the generators have to
| spin up and down a lot and then also deal with storms. In this
| the air acts like a cushion to the peaks of energy from waves
| and the whole power generation side can be bypassed in a storm
| even by just opening another air path.
| samizdis wrote:
| > ... power generation side can be bypassed in a storm even
| by just opening another air path.
|
| This surely presents the opportunity for an art installation
| along the lines of [1] _'Sea Organ' uses ocean waves to make
| beautiful music_ , but perhaps adapted to sound loud but
| harmonious storm alerts for, say, five minutes or so to warn
| coastal dwellers. Different tunes could cut in at varying
| storm strengths, maybe ... .
|
| [1] https://inhabitat.com/incredible-sea-organ-uses-ocean-
| waves-...
| r00fus wrote:
| We're dipping our fingers into a massive untapped stream of
| energy. It's also a vehicle for sustainable energy (part of a
| portfolio) that deserves investigation.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| This seems so inefficient: you're transferring power from the
| sun into carboniferous life forms, then relying on the
| compression of the earth to squeeze that carbon into a dense
| form. Then you have to mine, ship, store, and burn that carbon
| to boil water to turn turbines -- you are losing a lot of the
| power in harvest transport alone, let alone the steam cycle.
| Plus you get all the downsides of combustion: fly ash and
| greenhouse gases.
|
| Non sarcastic response: Different sites are going to have
| different needs and different local resources they can exploit
| for energy. There may be reasons why solar, wind, nuclear, etc.
| might not be appropriate here.
| TheSpiciestDev wrote:
| I really like the idea of wave energy, on-coast or off. While I
| have not looked too much into it (downsides, maintenance,
| scalability, ROI, etc.) it does feel intuitive.
|
| A day-dream, for example: could platforms or vessels mesh
| together with such technology[0] to be self-sufficient? Each
| vessel could link together with it's neighbor and, with the
| rising and falling of natural waves, they could all generate
| electricity for the entire network or individual nodes.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPNrwII5OhE
| readams wrote:
| Headline is misleading. This is a small-scale experiment. There
| have been various attempts to make wave energy work but so far
| it's proved to be elusive. This does seem like a new angle which
| maybe avoids some of the biggest challenges like the reducing the
| corrosive environment by actually spinning the turbine with air.
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(page generated 2021-02-03 23:01 UTC)