US Researchers Hope to Tap Ocean Flows for Electricity

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52241

The same energy that drives ocean waves and currents may be a rich source of electrical power. Researchers in Florida say even gentle flows of two or three knots are enough to drive a propeller attached to an underwater turbine. Advocates say ocean power could be cheap and help replace oil or coal-based systems that are blamed for global warming.

Douglas Bedgood is president of Keys Hydro Power and says he wants to build a turbine farm in the Florida Keys, "We could upscale this to 10 feet across and it would be perfect."

The goal is to harness the energy produced by the rise and fall of waters during the tidal cycle. His group is working on a test turbine that it plans to submerge in a site about nine meters under water between two islands.

"By the end of 2008 or early 2009, we will have several just to see how we can manage them as a group. Then another year after, it will be several hundred," Bedgood said.

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[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. This turbine fixation...

Is really poor reasoning. Turbines are expensive to manufacture, due to tolerences and have a big problem with fouling and corrosion in sea water. Better would be relatively inexpensive, modular and scalable drop-in edge effect arrays, that essentially use large amounts of small wings, in a "venetian blind" kind of arrangement and that move through wing turbulance. Proven technology that exists right now. Its modularity, scalability and ability to be a drop-in solution makes it perfect for deployment to emerging economies, thus removing pressure on fossil fuel generation.