Just 25 kilometres off US’ west coast, near Florida, the
world’s most powerful ocean current – the mighty Gulf Stream – rushes
by at nearly 32.1 billion litres per second. And it never stops.
To scientists, it represents a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean
energy.
Researchers
at Florida Atlantic University say the current could someday be used to
drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as much energy as
perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of the state’s
electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed within
months.
Researchers
say that ocean currents have the potential to produce as much energy as
perhaps 10 nuclear plants, enough to light up entire cities
“We can produce power 24/7,” said Frederick Driscoll, director of
the university’s Centre of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology. The
university is working to develop the technology in hopes that big
energy and engineering companies will eventually build huge underwater
arrays of turbines.
>From around the world, scientists are looking to the sea – currents, tides and
>waves – for its infinite energy.
Because
the technology is still taking shape, it is too soon to say how much it
might cost. But researchers hope to make it as cost-effective as fossil
fuels. While the initial investment may be higher, the currents that
drive the machinery are free.
There are still many unknowns and
risks. One fear is the “Cuisinart effect”: The spinning underwater
blades could chop up fish and other creatures.
Researchers said
the underwater turbines would pose little risk to passing ships. The
equipment would be moored to the ocean floor, with the tops of the
blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below the surface. But standard
navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them around
the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers said.
With regards to the environment, David White of US’ Ocean Conservancy said much
of the technology is untested in the outdoors.
“We
understand that there are trade-offs, and we need to start looking to
alternative energy,” he said. “But what are the environmental
consequences? We just don’t know that yet.”
An
artist rendition shows AquaBuOYs, Finavera Renewables’s wave energy
converters. The 35-ton buoys rise above the water about 6 feet but
extend beneath the surface some 60 feet, where a piston encased in an
underwater steel cylinder rises and falls with the waves and pushes
pressurised seawater through rubber hoses. The water is then pumped
into a turbine inside the buoy which spins to create power
Harnessing waves
Researchers on US’ West
Coast, where the currents are not as powerful, are looking instead to
waves to generate power: Canada’s Finavera Renewables is testing a wave
energy project in Washington state. It will eventually
include four buoys in a bay and generate enough power for up to 700 homes.
The
35-ton buoys rise above the water about 6 feet and extend some 60 feet
down. Inside each buoy, a piston rises and falls with the waves.
The
company hopes later to be the first to operate a commercial ‘wave
farm’, producing enough electricity to power up to 600 homes by 2012.
Finavera
spokesman Myke Clark acknowledged that wave energy is “definitely not
the only answer” to the world’s power needs and is never going to be as
cheap as coal.
“But it could be part of the energy mix, and
could be used to advantage off the coasts of Third World countries,
where entire towns have no connection to electrical grids,” he said.
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