Tidal Turbine Energy: April 2008 Archives
Technology Review: Tidal Turbines Help Light Up Manhattan
Apr 23, 2007 ... Working from barges and tugboats off New York City's Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month's heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River's tidal currents. The three-bladed turbines, which are five meters in diameter and resemble wind turbines, are made by Verdant Power of Arlington, VA. Thanks to lessons learned by wind turbine designers, tidal power is already economically competitive, producing electricity at prices similar to wind power, according to feasibility studies by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry R&D consortium. As a result, developers in the United States have laid claim to the best sites up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the past four years the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, DC, has issued preliminary permits for tidal installations at 25 sites, and it is considering another 31 applications. SOURCE: www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18567/
VIDEO OF RIVER TURBINE in NEW YORK
OCEAN TIDAL ENERGY
Northern Ireland
World’s Largest Tidal Turbine Successfully Installed
enn.com — The world ’s largest tidal turbine, weighing 1000 tonnes, has been installed in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. The tidal turbine is rated at 1.2 megawatts, which is enough to power a thousand local homes. It was built by Marine Current Turbines, and it will be the first commercial tidal turbine to produce energy.A company called Marine Current Turbines
will be installing a 1.2 megawatt tidal turbine in Northern Ireland's
Strangford Lough in August. The SeaGen turbine will be the world’s
largest ever tidal current device by a significant margin. It will
generate clean electricity for approximately 1000 homes. The turbine is
a prototype to be replicated on a large scale over the next few years.
The rotors on the SeaGen turbine turn slowly: about 10 to 20
revolutions per minute. A ship's propellers, by comparison, typically
run 10 times as fast. The risk of impact from SeaGen rotor blades is
small, because the marine creatures that swim in strong currents tend
to be agile, and can avoid slow-moving underwater obstructions.
Future turbines will generally be rated at from 750 to 1500 kilowatts (kW), and will be grouped under the sea, at places with high currents, in much the same way that wind turbines in a wind farm are set out in rows to catch the wind.
SOURCE: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/12_megawatts_wo.php
Island Nations
Tidal energy is the largest sustainable and non-polluting energy resource of Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations.
Cost-competitive turbines to turn tidal currents into electrical currents are already available but are not being used.
This is perhaps due to the fact that tidal energy is yet to be recognized as a viable renewable energy technology, most likely because of lack of adequate information and advocacy to become recognized by funding agencies, even though it is far cheaper than solar energy and more abundant than wind, hydro, or geothermal power.
First looks at these turbines indicate that turbine energy sources could also be used for river power without dams in land locked countries that are not dry and flat.
