Well its not possible to agree on how much hydro power you can get from anywhere.. The greens claim the climate is changing so we don't know what rainfall will happen. Without rainfall hydro doesn't work. We may as well forget about it until the climate change mess has been decided. Doing anything else could see us producing lots of CO2 for no reductions in CO2.
Same for solar and wind. It doesn't make sense to invest in stuff that will cause climate change in the short term unless you know that it works after the climate has changed due to building them.
I don't see the issue, the unit is designed to work with a low tidal head - all they are doing is using pumps at off-peak to create the head, when the tidal head is lacking.
I live in the country Harry. My next-door neighbours used to run a riding stables. Horses graze in the field immediately outside my kitchen window. They eat grass. It grows by itself and is free and green, like the wind and the tides and the sunshine that's also free and green and which you keep banging on about.
In the 18th century, horses pulled stagecoaches, the only means of long-distance transport for most people. Horses also did all the heavy work on the land such as ploughing and hauling carts. In the 19th century, London was full of horses pulling carriages and Hansome cabs and brewers' drays.
But then along came steam, and traction engines and locomotives started to replace horses. They were fuelled by coal; you know, black stuff. Definitely not green. Later, someone invented the internal combustion engine, and cars, taxis and trolley buses started to appear, replacing the horse-drawn carriages and Hansome cabs. They were fuelled by petrol of one sort or another. Again, not green. The final blow to horse-power came in WW1, when Britain lost nearly half a million horses. They were never replaced. Industry and agriculture had moved on to more efficient forms of motive power.
So if green is so good, where are all the stagecoaches, the heavy horses on the land and the Hansome cabs then Harry? Apart from those kept for nostalgic or recreational purposes, they've gone, simply because coal and petrol are far more useful and efficient fuels than grass.
Sunshine is free. As is tidal energy. The size of the machine has no bearing on efficiency. Efficiency is the percentage of the available energy converted (into electricity in this case.)
Yes I can see you know nothing about horses. Working horses need high energy food additionally to grass, ie grain or these days "concentrates". In days of yore,large areas of land were set aside for growing oats just to feed horses and oxen. You don't get energy from nowhere.
More likely to be a fiftieth of the cost, going by past experience of green initiatives.
The cheapest way of getting diesel fuel from solar power is already in common use worldwide, and the properties of the oil concerned have been known for many decades. Google for Brassica napus. It was commercially grown by the Victorians for making lamp oil and animal feed and the oil is now used either on its own after minimal processing or as an additive to petroleum based diesel fuel. The residue after pressing the oil out of the seeds is high protein animal feed.
Grass Harry. All grains (wheat, barley, oats etc), they're all grasses, or didn't you know that? Concentrates are made from them. So why have all these green machines, the horses, disappeared, Harry? It's because they've been replaced by infinitely more efficient machines that burn fuels such as coal or oil.
I think the choice is between low intensity agricultural feeding on grass for countryside horses wandering round a field while doing normal farm work and taking the boss to the pub and back and the convenience of having to carry a sack of grain as against a number of bales of hay per day for the horse pulling a loaded cart round a city all day.
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