[Skippy]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

There's a lot of ideas for alternative energy, like solar panels and windfarms.
The issue I have with these is the obvious - the sun sets every day, and the wind isn't constant either.
So how about building a huge turbine, giving it vanes so it'll always be presenting itself head-on to the stream (like a windmill), attach it with cable to a heavy weight to anchor itself and chuck it in the sea where there's a decent current? This turbine can be constructed from light, strong, non-eroding materials like a carbon sandwich, and due to the enormous torque presented by the ocean current, you can connect it to a generator with a high-ratio step-up gearbox. The whole unit can be sealed, and the powercable delivering power to the grid can be laid along the seafloor so as not to experience strain from the current.
Harvesting energy from the ocean currents is in fact using solar energy, but there's a lot more torque and power to be tapped than using windfarms - and it's non-polluting, and out of sight.
I can't see this approach being expensive at all, and an array of these spread along the coastline should be able to deliver a fair amount of power to the grid.
Any comments?

Check out these guys, Wavegen, they have a great site that discusses using energy from waves. Portugal has hired a Scottish Company, Ocean Power Delivery, to deploy sausage shaped tubes 5 kilometers off the coast to harness wave energy to provide electricity to up to 1200 homes!!

I have a blog listed in my profile where I have been gathering info on Alternative Energy Sources. I think the time is now to start advancing the alternate energy, oil and natural gas will run out in our lifetimes.

[geokker]

I think wave power is definitely the way to go in the short to medium term. Geothermal systems and orbital solar panels are fairly sexy too. In the long term, I'm assuming someone somewhere will exploit quantum energy in some efficient manner - hopefully fyoozhun energy - a type of energy with a y and a z has got to be cool.

[goku]

use nuclear power plants to generate electicity. harnes the radiation from the waste to power cars and generate more electricity. once we accumilate enough waste to run off of, shut the reactors down.

[biochemrex]

Dear Bo you are right about the counter rotating turbines, but this is not a new idea. It has been patented and is under development in Australia. Keith

[biochemrex]

Dear Go your idea has some merit. It would be possible to build a large storage unit and the heat energy could be harnessed. It would hardly be a huge source of energy, but what I think would be most valuable would be the preservation of what might become valuable isotopes. It would be a mistake to bury them in the ground since they can only be made by nuclear reactors and while most at present have no commercial value that could always change. With laser chemistry it would be possible to mine isotopes from such a low grade source and at some stage they may become far more valuable than gold? Kieth

[goku]

ye know cars put off a alot of heat. we need to harness that energy and change it to kenetic energy.

[Boerseun]

Nice to see an old thread revived!

Another thought:

How about taking a square kilometre of ocean surface, and criss-cross it with thousands of insulated cables made from a piezoelectric metal? And make sure that the insulation is sufficiently buoyant to suspend the cable just under the water surface. Add a couple of polystyrene floats every couple of meters to maximise reaction to surface motion, and anchor the whole thing sufficiently, say every hundred meters or so, so that the whole thing doesn't just float away.

If you have a cable every meter, you'll need 2,000 kilometers worth of cable. (1000 north-south, 1000 east-west.)
If you have an anchor every 100 metres, you'll need 100 anchors. (10 north-south x 10 east-west)
If you have floats every 10 metres, you'll need 10,000 floats. (100 n-s x 100 e-w)

...and plug the whole shebang into your power grid!

Seeing as the surface is permanently in motion, you'll continuously be harvesting electricity through, well, eventually solar power. Sun heats up air, causes wind, moves surface.

I wonder what the potential output of such a scheme would be?

A tiny little piezoelectric filament in a lighter is enough to provide a spark... but maybe the waves won't be moving fast enough to cause a useful piezoelectric effect.

[geokker]

The Oceans are chock-full of crystals - salt. There must be a way of harvesting their power through the natural conduction of water.

Whatever we do, we should exploit that brainy German blokes discovery - mass is energy. The Earth is pretty massive. We should find a way to exploit it directly, maybe gravitationally. It's a big, spinny thing after all - a turbine that'd need the power of God to slow down.

[Boerseun]

Gonna bump this sucker up some...

Anybody here with experience and/or knowledge about piezoelectric thingys, as per my post #27?

[Zythryn]

Afraid I have no experience with those Boerseun. How much energy do they produce? There sounds like you have a lot of material involved between the floats and the anchors and cables.

One thing I think we need to keep in mind is most energy sources always will have their peak and down times. Solar working only half or a third of the day is not a problem IF it is part of a larger solution. Wind is the same.

I have heard a number of people going a route of wind and solar, as wind tends to work more reliably at night and winter while solar is more reliable during the summer (and day of course).

Anyone familiar with any of the fusion plant studies going on? I have heard there are some at the research stage. The longest sustained burn is about 90 seconds I think?