No one disputes the fact that the notorious greenhouse effect does a good job of heating the whole world, and therefore, numerous researchers are looking for ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and reduce its emissions.
One way to achieve the latter is to use environmentally friendly renewable energy sources. With this in mind, Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) presented its way of producing “green” electricity.
Currently, many experts call the sun and wind the most promising renewable energy sources. In some places on the planet, they can be found in more than enough quantities to provide electricity to nearby cities, but this is not always possible.
In some areas, the sun may not appear because of the clouds for weeks, if not months, or even is too low above the horizon, in others, the wind is not strong enough, or the nature of the landscape does not allow windmills to be installed.
Then, there is the water, or rather, its movement, provoked by the wind and the influence of the nearest satellite of the Earth, the Moon. The energy of waves and tides may well be converted into mechanical motion, and through it into electric current.
True, researchers have so far not been able to come up with a single method with high efficiency. Some of them were quite impressive and promising, but there are many technical difficulties in their implementation, due to which uninterrupted operation and the generation of sufficiently large power seem problematic.
Despite this, the flow of ideas does not dry out, and there are more and more installation options that can convert sea waves and tides into electric currents. Some of them are very exotic; for example, the development of the SWEL company, according to its specialists, can extract electricity from vibrations.
The device itself is somewhat reminiscent of a pontoon bridge, as it consists of small, long, and flat floats. This “generator” spreads on the water and oscillates along with the waves. All floats are fixed on a rigid chord, the central fixed section. It is on it that electric generators are installed that produce energy.
Each float is connected to its gexanerator through rigid guides and drives it while moving on the waves. Together they are united in a single system and managed centrally.
As soon as the next wave is fixed, the controller decides at what point in time each generator can be removed from the electric current so that the entire installation works with the greatest efficiency. As the developers promise, scaling will make it possible to obtain up to 100 MW of energy, and its price will be 1 cent per kilowatt.
According to SWEL, they have been working on this technology for years and have conducted numerous tests on the ground and in actual conditions. While their creation has so far only caused skepticism since in order to receive the promised capacities, the installation must be truly huge.
Several questions remain unanswered: how efficient will a large generator be, what is the area covered by it, will it be too heavy, and will its operation become too dangerous for shipping.