Russia Moves Forward on 10GW Tidal Power Plant – DailyTech.com: God, this story brings me back to the Power Generation class in college.
In Russia’s Mezen Bay, the difference between high and low tide is more than 20 feet. Lifting billions of tons of water this high involves huge amounts of energy… energy that Russia plans to harness. The nation is moving forward with plans to build a massive tidal power plant at the location. A turbine for the pilot project was delivered earlier this year and is slated to begin operation within the next few months. The pilot is only 1.5 MW capacity, but if the design is succesful, a 10,000 MW station will be built in its place.
Go, Go Tidal Power…
These are the types of news that make me feel slightly more optimistic about the planet’s future.
This is very cool!! New York City has just finished the initial test of two turbines in the East River. The next phase is a plan to add four more. Then, there is talk of possibly hundreds. I’m glad to see we’re not alone.
I’m still surprised Canada isn’t doing this in the Bay of Fundy with the highest tides in the world at something like 13 – 16 meters!! They’ve been talking about it since the 1950s.
What with at four and a half knot current on the East River, it would behoove NYC to invest in tidal power. I had plans that I submitted about thirty years ago, but they laughed at me. I think if I went and re-submitted them again, they might not laugh.
Yeah – the Bay of Fundy is a major tourist attraction (grew up in the area) – tidal power not such a good fit for a tourist attraction (it all comes back to money, eh?) But yes, this looks like a wonderful green energy source – we should be looking at this more carefully.
PS Someone fix the blasted spam filter – its catching everything I type – trying again without including the link to my blog.
#1, wish I could be so optimistic. But this kind of thing could NEVER get built in the U.S. Our plutocratic government will never allow it. We will be frantically burning oil and coal until the day our economy finally goes under like the Titanic, and our lives become like “Mad Max”.
These will look great off the California coast.
10,000 MW?? Now we can run the flux capacitor with green power instead of stolen plutonium !!
Seriously, it is great the Russians ran studies on possible damage to sea life before proceeding. Maybe there is hope for the planet after all. Wonder what the tides are like off the coast of Alaska? We’ve already pipelined and drilled the interior.
Great article.
#7 – BubbaRay.
I’m with you on this one. And yes, they’re over the 1.21 gigawatts!! Way to go Russia.
#6 – James Hill,
You mean when you’re diving of course. You do have a point. We should be concerned about marine life everywhere we put underwater turbines. In NYC, they found that the fish don’t tend to go where the water is deepest, which is where the current is strongest and best for the turbines installed here.
The Russians always brag that they are loaded with oil and gas. Does this project means something else?
#9 Probably means the same thing as Iran racing to produce nuclear power. The oil IS running out, so why waste it domestically when you will be able to sell it any crazy prices to the oil addicted americans?
We are keep a pretty close eye on tidal power here in the Bay of Fundy. We are looking at the ‘new’ style of in-stream turbines not those outdated power dams that cause huge damage to the environment. The new turbiness look a lot like wind turbines but are underwater. I’ve been following this on my Bay of Fundy blog: bayoffundy.blogspot.com