The Earth’s angular momentum is the exact opposite of renewable. It’s even less renewable than so-called fossil fuels.
28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
141–150 of 192 posts
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Subsidies would be useful in getting it from $108/MWh to $54/MWh faster, but they don't change the underlying physics of the technology.
Sorry, what I mean is that the $48/MWh figure benefits from significant subsidy; it's not a realistic cost of provision.
Perhaps surprisingly, it is a realistic cost and could be much lower if the electricity market were efficient (as opposed to being an amalgam of regional monopolies with essentially no price incentives).
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#143I'm thinking loudly about three questions:
1. How does the maintenance fee and replacement fee look like, per year?
2. Is it possible to develop a home use version?
3. I assume the tide is going to be consistent, but need to dig deeper into this.
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#144I'm thinking loudly about three questions: 1. How does the maintenance fee and replacement fee look like, per year? 2. Is it possible to develop a home use version? 3. I assume the tide is going to be consistent, but need to dig deeper into this.
> Is it possible to develop a home use version?
I suspect that these things are heckin' dangerous unless they are far from humans, so that would be a challenge I think.
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#145The sea is a harsh environment, but the energy it contains, in the form of waves (basically concentrated wind) and tides is enormous (partly thanks to the density of water.) Of course, like with all renewable, location matters. But there are lots of places with strong tides, and lots of places with reliable waves. Harvesting this abundant energy at scale, with reasonable maintenence costs will be the next breakthroug…
I've often thought why not dam a whole estuary or bay and use hydro to collect the energy on the the fall and rise of the tide. I know the environmental impact wouldake it unpalatable but are there any reasons it wouldn't work?
Where I'm from they have some of the highest tides in the entire world and there's an area not far from here that has always been sort of a local talking candidate for such a huge project.
https://earthsciencesociety.com/2014/05/01/a-tidal-power-lag...
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#146I'm thinking loudly about three questions: 1. How does the maintenance fee and replacement fee look like, per year? 2. Is it possible to develop a home use version? 3. I assume the tide is going to be consistent, but need to dig deeper into this.
> Is it possible to develop a home use version? I suspect that these things are heckin' dangerous unless they are far from humans, so that would be a challenge I think.
Good point.
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I mostly meant for or rather caused by this kite. I wouldn't expect it intuitively, as it's just a big object in the water, not moving erratically or obstructing anything.
It has a 39-foot wingspan and moves in a figure 8 pattern on a seabed tether. There's going to be at least some implication for local wildlife, but is it worse than the impacts of fossil fuels? I have no idea. It's definitely an interesting concept. I'm sure it will get more efficient and require a smaller footprint over time, assuming we invest in it.
> There's going to be at least some implication for local wildlife, but is it worse than the impacts of fossil fuels?
For that matter, how does it compare to the local impact of other watercraft?
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#148This would be great in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skookumchuck_Narrows
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're assuming renewable means infinite. > - nuclear Nuclear isn't renewable, but there's a huge amount of it and it doens't have the same problems. > (and so the sun) is not renewable: The energy we get from it is. It's not a fixed resource that we're depleting. When we burn all the coal, it's gone . Tomorrow there will be more sunlight. We're not cutting chunks off of the sun to get energy for solar. > - f…
> I think you're assuming renewable means infinite. No, for the purpose of this dumb exercise of mine, I mean the resource we use for energy production is replenishable. > It's not a fixed resource that we're depleting. What I mean is that the Sun is going to exhaust its H supply. We just happen to harvest part of its output, but it's depleting itself whether we harvest it or not, so we might as well do it :shrug:. S…
We could push it further and say there's no renewable source possible - at least until the multivac finally gets the answer.
> The resource in reality doesn't replenish
Sunlight does. Wind does. A water wheel in a river is renewable power. Solar panels producing power today don't make tomorrow darker.
Re: 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also relevant, houses aren't boiling a kettle and running their oven 24x7, so this is more like worst-case peak load and will be spread across different houses. Having some kind of battery storage closer to the houses will help a lot - the tidal generator can run fairly constantly and fill the battery, and the houses can draw in short bursts from the battery.
There is synchronized kettle use and toilet use around televised sports games.
So advertising is one of the biggest factors in determining the required grid capacity? Perhaps we should charge them for it.