Top-heavy marine device falls over, film at 11

[fivemack]

http://www.tridentenergy.co.uk/index.php

I don't quite understand how what these people are trying to do makes any kind of sense at all; their Web site looks like the write-up of a good A-level design technology project, and says in pieces dated February that they're about to start the test that clearly just failed to start in mid-September. The design seems to have a single guidance bearing taking all the sideways force of North Sea waves, held up on a remarkably flimsy-looking tower, and their prototype is made of eighty tons of steel and using four quite complicated linear generators to generate twenty measly kilowatts. I admit that I was slightly surprised that any marine engineers were involved in the endeavour at all.

What have I missed?

I'm sure it's unfair to compare the cost of tidal equipment to that of wind or solar; there's been, what, three orders of magnitude more money available for optimising wind and solar. But I can't help feeling there's a conclusion to draw from the fact that almost every story I read about wave power involves a wave-power demonstration, set up by a small company and producing less power than the smallest wind turbine Vestas will deign to sell, being destroyed by the wrath of Poseidon.

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

This is always the way with a proof-of-concept demo anything - they're intended to demonstrate one point, not to be useful in the real world. If they didn't have limitations they wouldn't be prototypes. It's a pity that the limitation in this case was quite so messy.