Wave farm
Starting next August Portugal will have an offshore wave energy park in Póvoa do Varzim, the first in the world. Starting with an energy production of 2.25MW, the park should be producing 20MW by 2008 and 5000MW by 2020.
To give you an idea of how much electricity that is 30MW can supply energy to 20000 homes.
This technology surely won't solve all of mankind's energy woes, but if it proves sucessful it will at least help reducing the amount of fossil fuels used and/or the amount of nuclear waste created.
To give you an idea of how much electricity that is 30MW can supply energy to 20000 homes.
This technology surely won't solve all of mankind's energy woes, but if it proves sucessful it will at least help reducing the amount of fossil fuels used and/or the amount of nuclear waste created.
posted by DCveR at 7:37 AM
9 Comments:
Interesting - the 2020 figure is impressive, the same as about 10 typical coal-fired or nuclear power stations I think.
I'm always a little wary about using 'number of homes' to demonstrate outputs because homes use fairly small amounts of electricity compared with transport, factories or offices. Also any such measure should indicate the total number of homes in a country, in Britain I think this is over 10 million! So we need a lot of electricity and quite a lot of power stations.......
Any idea what Portugal's total electricity useage is?
You're a scientific guy. What do you know about zero-point energy?
I ask because my laptop battery is only lasting about an hour these days.
hughes views: The costumary power plants, with fossil fuels or nuclear, are in the GW range I believe. Portugal is now consuming about 4300GWh. This means even if our needs don't grow much the whole project will only amount to 5GWh and is no solution for our needs, but think of it this way, for every GW of electricity it produces less fuel is wasted and less polution created.
chill daddy: Zero state energy? From quantum physics, the lowest energy of any given system. If you meant free-out-of-magic-energy, I think that is pure imagination. You can't take something from nothing, unless of course you're taking something from something else you don't know about. Of course a hundred years ago a space trip was pure imagination too.
hughes views: Just asked a co-worker and it seems I was wrong. Nuclear power plants range from 0,05 to 1 GW, fossil fuels to much less than that.
Here in Humanitoba we have Hydro-Electric power comin' out the wazoo!
We'll dam the entire northern region if we have too. Our untapped potential is something like 5000Megawatts.
All that we urbanites know is that we have the lowest published rates in Northa America. We read about the cause and effects of all of the damNing effects of our system on the Northern Ecosystem and people but hey..it's a demographics game
I know a guy working on a theoritical generator for "free out of magic energy". He's pretty convincing.
(medicalautopilot.com)
Only go there if you like numbers and hate graphics.
Here in Belize we are dependent on buying electric power from Mexico. So when their grid fails, ours does too. Except on Caye Caulker, we have 2 giant diesel engines (I mean GIANT) on the back side of the island, sometimes they forget to put gas in them though. Yes that's happened. No, I don't make this stuff up.
There's been a debate rumbling around for at least twenty years about whether to build a barrage across the Severn estuary here in SW England. It has the second largest tide displacement in the world and the potential to generate huge amounts of electricity. Trouble is it would have a major impact on the local environment and wildlife so we have one group of environmentalists up against another. I doubt if it will get finished (and maybe not even started) in my lifetime.....
homo escapeons: Dams are rather controversial, on one hand they can do a lot of damage to an ecossystem, but they also create oportunities for different species to develop.
chill daddy: I'll go there as soon as I have the time to give it a good read. Thanks for the link.
TGOV: That is one of the good things about this new system, being offshore it doesn't mess with the coast line. I wonder however how the fishermen will cope with it. Tidal power? This reminds me I of our old tidal mills... thanks, you gave me an idea for a new post.
caribbean colors: I'll take your word for it... but you can't blame me for laughing. Fortunately you don't have a nuclear power plant, imagine if they would forget to watch and maintain one of those...
hughes views: Those environmentalists who fight over such issues sometimes drive me mad. It's always a matter of balancing profit and loss. Can't they get it? Every solution brings new problems. If we were to quit fossil fuels and use only bio-diesel, for instance, we would need much more corn fields and that would mean less forests. Balance and extremists don't go well together.
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