Headline is misleading. This is a small-scale experiment. There have been various attempts to make wave energy work but so far it's proved to be elusive. This does seem like a new angle which maybe avoids some of the biggest challenges like the reducing the corrosive environment by actually spinning the turbine with air.
the design essentially mimics a natural
blowhole
a space has been made in the center
which will prompt waves to go in
rise and fall and move air up into the
turbine
which then converts into power
And here's another, hydraulic/compressor design developed in Israel in 2011 by Inna Bravermann (24 when she founded Eco Wave Power). The design is said to produce 1MW per $1MM. A pilot plant was installed on Gibraltar's coast in 2016; by 2018 it had 15,000 grid-connected hours. It now has projects around the world for over 100MW.
I wonder how to deal with the amount of organic material (seaweed, shells etc) that quickly covers all surface areas and reducing efficiency.
Salt seawater is a difficult environment to have advanced equipment inside.
Presumably with the same antifoul paints we use to protect large ocean going ships, which cannot be hauled like pleasure vessels every 12-18 months for re-application.
I really like the idea of wave energy, on-coast or off. While I have not looked too much into it (downsides, maintenance, scalability, ROI, etc.) it does feel intuitive.
A day-dream, for example: could platforms or vessels mesh together with such technology[0] to be self-sufficient? Each vessel could link together with it's neighbor and, with the rising and falling of natural waves, they could all generate electricity for the entire network or individual nodes.
According to this[1] youtube video for a similar technology, the turbines spin in the same direction regardless of the air flow. That's a pretty impressive innovation. It looks like it's called a "Wells Turbine"[2].
I remember seeing an episode of Tomorrow’s World (BBC) in the 1980s where more or less this system was used to generate electricity from anywhere there was a change of water height, so even in small scale at weirs which was the demonstration project. It’s quite possible the TV piece was aired showcasing an implementation of Well’s original work, as it captured energy from air that switched directions forced by water moving through a tube, and power was generated in both phases.
There are obviously countless inventions that never make it for one reason or another, timing can be the biggest issue if investment policy is not pointing in the right direction to develop them further, and I suspect a lot of solutions for environmental problems fell into this hole in the last century when economic growth at any cost was the mantra. Hopefully more of the work that was done then might resurface.
This seems so inefficient: you're transferring power from the moving water to moving air, but the air can be compressed. It must be losing a lot of it's power in that transfer alone. Plus, you get all the downsides of deploying a mechanism at sea: constant salt and stress.
The compression is a good thing, it drives the power to the turbine in the first place and also acts like a spring so it'll smooth out the energy impulse from the waves.
One of the big problems with other wave energy systems is the stress from waves is pretty peaky so the generators have to spin up and down a lot and then also deal with storms. In this the air acts like a cushion to the peaks of energy from waves and the whole power generation side can be bypassed in a storm even by just opening another air path.
> ... power generation side can be bypassed in a storm even by just opening another air path.
This surely presents the opportunity for an art installation along the lines of [1] ‘Sea Organ’ uses ocean waves to make beautiful music , but perhaps adapted to sound loud but harmonious storm alerts for, say, five minutes or so to warn coastal dwellers. Different tunes could cut in at varying storm strengths, maybe ... .
I'm interested in micro-scale power generation from intermittent sources, so the other day I came across a paper [0] which discusses capturing the energy in gusts more efficiently: drive the turbine as if it were a motor when you detect a gust to accelerate the blades past stall. Very clever!
Another comment below [1] also prompted my reply, if they do use the Wells Turbine, this is even more relevant.
This seems so inefficient: you're transferring power from the sun into carboniferous life forms, then relying on the compression of the earth to squeeze that carbon into a dense form. Then you have to mine, ship, store, and burn that carbon to boil water to turn turbines -- you are losing a lot of the power in harvest transport alone, let alone the steam cycle. Plus you get all the downsides of combustion: fly ash and greenhouse gases.
Non sarcastic response: Different sites are going to have different needs and different local resources they can exploit for energy. There may be reasons why solar, wind, nuclear, etc. might not be appropriate here.
I wasn't comparing it with fossil fuels, but with more direct energy, where you have a turbine sunk in water, or other forms of floating wave generators, without the power being intermediated by air movement
Isn't that traditional? We lack most mechanisms of extracting power from sources. Like, even with nuclear radiation we insist on converting to steam generally.
Some times an effective mechanism doesn't exist. Like how if I could, the ideal way to warm my home would be to just transmit power to a bubble around me and warm that, since the rest of the house doesn't need warming, but there is no pleasant way to do that so you use a couple of low efficiency ways:
* heating the entire house
* using lots of energy to grow plants for animals to eat so you can consume them so you can generate heat you can keep within insulation with a sweater
We're dipping our fingers into a massive untapped stream of energy. It's also a vehicle for sustainable energy (part of a portfolio) that deserves investigation.
