i'm not sure what kind of structures they are. if they are big structures that go down in depth below sea level, then they could act as breakwaters, blocking swell in some areas.
it looks to me like a lot of the structure is just floating on the surface of the water - like a big buoy - , which i dont think would block too much wave energy. so thats good for everyone. i checked out that site. pretty cool, i'm glad delaware finally decided to give the wind farms a go.
Me too. I am from DE and all the state is known for is being the first state to sign the declaration of independence (which no one outside of DE knows). Now DE is also known for being the first state to develop offshore wind power.
windfarms if they were spread apart like in the video on the homepage but went to the bottom would they block swell? or maybe it could break a swell up and the beach in front will have a-frames all the time? i mean other than this year it's hard enough to get a good size swell around here and it they get shredded to nothing rolling into the beach that would really suck i guess it depends on how wide the field is?
The best part of the video that is on the homepage is the couple of clips they show where there is no wind and none are spinning. Very productive.
CO2 emissions by energy type: Some food for thought from WIRED magazine article a month or two back: Intro Nuclear Power Section
There's room for both. I was just watching a news report on how google powers their entire business through green energy. Were talking about one of the most technologically advanced businesses in the world. All of their buildings have solar panels on the top, which i believe is the chief resource of their energy. And they were able to show that using renewable energy was indeed cost effective, as they spent less money then they would have otherwise.
wondering when we are going to make proper use of the ocean currents - one of the greatest sources of energy available. i'm guessing, the biggest hurdle here is expense
How would you harness such an energy? I think its in the same category as geothermal energy. There are big engineering hurdles we need to over come.
That graph, what are the inner blue bars representing? During the manufacturing process solar panels, there is a carbon foot print. But in application they are zero emission, even the generators that convert the energy from the solar panels to usable energy don't emit anything. The only danger they pose is there is a certain type of solar panel that a company name Solar One makes that uses an extremely effective but toxic chemical for the photovoltaic process. But they offer free to all customers clean up in the event of a breakage.
pretty straight forward. its analogous to damns and wind farms. The ocean currents create a force against some sort of resistance - this is captured and distributed into energy. But, i agree the cost of engineering is the hold back here, but I can't imagine a better source of energy.
I don't mean like that. To harness hydroenergy you build a dam and control the flow of water. This is small scale, but the formation of man made lakes because of the dam shows that we are impacting the environment and ecosystems with the dam. You can't really dam an ocean current. I had to go back and proof-read everything because I spelled dam as damn, every time.
why would you need to control the ocean. the ocean currents are never static... think of a wind mill underwater.