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

the nearest deserts to us are distinctly far away

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Perhaps instead of moving the energy from the deserts to the population, we should move the people to the energy-generating deserts? We could repurpose the land occupied by cities in fertile countries to growing food. A modest proposal l-)