Tidal Power Article

Just by looking around and feeling the surrounding environment, one can see that Mother Nature has given the Earth virtually endless and totally renewable and clean resources to provide energy to help man survive. The wind blows windmills to generate power. The sun provides heat which is converted to thermal energy or electric current. The heat stored beneath the ground continuously generates warmth for cold homes. What else can man try to harness to permanently make the use of fossil fuels a thing of the past? The answer is Wave Power.

Wave power is the capturing and harnessing the energy that is transported by the ocean’s surface waves. Waves are created by the blowing of the wind across the sea. There is so much potential energy that is stored in these waves. This can be seen with the thrashing and crashing of the waves on rocks, or how the water speeds up as they enter a cave or grove on the terrain. Even if the waves are not towering, the mild waves just keep coming. So the question now is how these waves are transformed into energy that man can safely utilize.

With the correct placing of a opening or funnel, the water drawn quickly into a chamber. These chambers are air tight and as the waves come rushing in, the air contained in the chamber is pushed upwards as the water level rises. This air is forced through a turbine causing it to spin and generate power. It has a dual function or it doesn’t just turn in with outgoing air. As the water level lowers and the outside air is sucked back in, the turbine will spin and continue to generate power.  Power cables which are attached to the turbines collect the power and send it to locations that are wired to the grid.

Aside from using the bobbing water levels to push air through turbines, Portugal utilizes another type of wave power harnesser. Known as “Pelamis” wave converters, these devices look like giant red snakes with four sections connected by hinges. The bobbing of the water caused by the wave make the sections bend up and down. Inside the sections, the hinges are attached to pistons that pump and drive a power generating turbine. As the sections continue to bob up and down the more power is generated. So the more waves, the more power. Due to the realization of wave power and the invention of the Pelamis, Portugal focuses it dream on powering nearly 70% of its home by using wave power alone and no fossil fuels.

The shift to using wave power has its advantages that it is free and no waste product is produced as a result and it can produce a huge amount of power. The challenge for developers is to come up with designs that can survive rough weather, reduce the noise levels the waves produce, and how to maximize even the tiniest amount of wave current during the calm times of the sea.

It may just be a matter of timing when these devices go online and man can focus on using what is freely available and maximizing it and finally stop taking what is destroying the Earth itself.