World's First Ocean Powered Continent?

More than a third of Australia's power could be generated by wave technology, according to a report just filed by the engineers who provide scientific measurements for, of all things, the offshore oil industry.

This would make Australia the first entire continent that could actually get a good chunk of its power from wave energy.

RPS MetOcean, the oceanographic measurement firm found that the waves around Australia constitute an energy resource of almost 200,000 megawatts, or four times the country's current total installed power generation capacity.

The report was commissioned to identify suitable areas for a wave energy facility off the coastline.
Alan Burns of Carnegie Corporation won a five-year exclusive license to develop wave energy off Australia's coasts. For years Burns has worked on the technology of a wave device he named CETO after the Greek sea goddess.

CETO is one of many different technologies designed to harness the enormous renewable energy in the ocean's waves to create zero emissions energy. What sets CETO apart is that it simultaneously provides desalinated water to the shore.

The way the particular CETO technology works is shown in this animation. Basically, long columns of individual units are anchored to the sea floor, and sway in unison with the motion of passing waves, driving pumps which in turn pressurize seawater that is delivered ashore through a pipeline laying along the ocean floor. Each 125 unit CETO farm can make enough power for 15,000 households, 20 MW.

A CETO farm is a little more industrial-looking than fish are used to seeing around these parts, but it is harmless to marine life.

The opinions of our own species matter more, of course. But since it is out of sight, the Greek sea godess could provide energy to the Australian continent without upsetting the NIMBYs among us.

Map from oldprint.com

From smh.com.au
For Matter Network Read more...

Google Floats Wave-Powered Data-Center Idea

Pelamis/Google combination will use the ocean to cool data








Google has filed a patent for the rather brilliant idea of a deep-water cooled data center, and describes it, here.


"A system that includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of units."

The platforms, to be positioned between three to seven miles offshore in water ranging from 50 feet to 250 feet deep, are designed to use renewable power created by Pelamis wave energy converters connected to a floating platform holding Google's data centers. Standard shipping containers would house racks of computers that could be transported by truck and placed onto a boat, and transferred to the floating center by crane.

Each joint of the floating Pelamis unit has a 2.25 megawatt capacity, and each data center would have enough to supply 40 megawatts. Google also has plans to use direct current electricity to run DC-capable computers, so no energy would be lost in transmission.

In addition, pipes will circulate cold deep water throughout to cool all the hardware inside the containers, preventing overheating.

The ocean thus supplies Google with the two critical needs of data centers, cooling and power. (Not to mention that the ocean is a vast rent-free space. Data centers can be as large as 100,000 square feet which takes lots of electricity and costly real estate.)

Google mentions an additional important advantage of basing data centers such as this patent envisions on the open seas: when critical infrastructure has been taken out, for instance by earthquakes or hurricanes, the data centers could be towed back in close to land to re-establish local computing power and telecommunications.

Related:
Next, Google Brings Cheap Energy From The Earth

Via Good Clean Tech

For Matternetwork Read more...

Air-Conditioning Cities With Deep Water

Virtually any city or town next to a lake, ocean or river could pump chilled water from the depths for natural air cooling

China is considering using deep ocean water to aircondition Hong Kong.

The high rise office buildings of Hong Kong; man-made "cliffs"-- are right next to the ocean. This makes it easy to cool them, by leveraging the differential between the cold ocean depths and warm surface temperatures.

Hong Kong will circulate deep ocean water through a district-wide cooling system.The water is pumped to a heat exchanger at the shore and the warm water from the buildings flows down to push cool water up to the buildings. The system is both elegant and cost effective.

Similar projects to cool large building complexes and downtown areas are underway in Singapore, Gibralta, Stockholm and Honolulu.

The same technique can be applied using the cold depths of lakes and rivers too. And not just for cities. This natural cooling be used by smaller communities like universities, hospitals or hotel resorts.

Cornell University has a pilot project utilizing lake water for its cold water source. Pumps draw cold water from a nearby deep lake, Lake Cayuga.

Enwave also uses lake water, to cool downtown Toronto. Their interactive diagram shows you very clearly how their deepwater cooling works using the icy-cold water of Lake Ontario as its renewable energy source of naturally chilled deep lake water.

How fortunate that all through history, we built so many towns and cities near water. Back then, that was because it was easier to move stuff along waterways. Early roads got muddy, but water made for easy hauling.

And now that we are looking for low-carbon alternatives, that fortuitous proximity to water comes in handy for another use. Eco air-conditioning.

Published at Matter Network Read more...

Scientist To Tap River Currents

The US could sustainably produce electricity from 3.5 million miles of rivers, using "smart materials"

An expert in electricity-generating "smart materials" and the author of 22 papers in refereed journals is searching for a way to harness the power of rivers without the ecological consequences of hydroelectric dams.

Dr Weiland, Materials Science Professor at the University of Pittsburg has come up with a gentle way to create what could be the next great clean energy supply for the world using piezoelectric ionic polymers.

Piezoelectric materials generate a slight electrical current when moved: in this case, by river currents and eddies.

Dr. Weiland is trying out the idea of using a flowing mesh of tiny strips of piezoelectric plastic, undulating like seaweed in the current of rivers and streams, up to 30 yards wide and about a mile long, to create electricity. The resulting electrical current would pass to small substations along the river's edge before charging a group of batteries to supply up to 40% of the electricity needed for a small town.

Her method likely wouldn't generate as much energy as a hydroelectric dam but would work with the river flow keeping the river intact and healthy. "There are other materials that give better performance or have higher energy densities," said Weiland, who is a published expert in "smart materials". But she is willing to sacrifice a little power to keep the ecosystem happy.

Dr. Weiland and her engineering students are now working out the best size, shape and array to test in the Kiskiminetas River, to supply the town of Vandergrift, near Pittsburg. An important consideration in the final design will be that they maintain the health and appearance of the river which is used for fishing, canoe trips and other recreational activities. Once the array goes in on the riverbed, she said, "if you were able to look at it, you would just see a bunch of little things wiggling. It wouldn't look that different from a bunch of plant life."

According to Christopher Lynch, a smart materials researcher from the University of California, Los Angeles, this is the first freshwater hydroelectric power project of its kind. "The whole idea is very interesting," said Lynch. "Harvesting energy from rivers, ocean waves and currents are going to be an important segment of our overall energy generation in the future."

For centuries humans have dammed rivers and streams to grind grain and later, generate electricity. This could be the beginning of tapping into the power of flowing water more sustainably, using a more subtle technique. There are three and a half million miles of rivers in the nation, with towns along those riverbanks, and this small installation could supply as much as 40% of one town's electricity, so this could have wide applications...

From Mark Roth at the Post Gazette via Discovery News
Image from the Post Gazette

For Matternetwork
Read more...