OT Tidal power

[Andrew May]

Which was what was proposed for the Severn. The problem is that at high tide what is in the reservoir cannot be higher than the outside level so no power. Tidal flow works both ways but there is a point where the levels are the same and, again, no power.

ISTR that there was a proposal for the Severn that required a second (empty) basin from the barrage to somewhere near the Devon border. This would be emptied at low tide and the main barrage filled at high tide. That way there was always a differential in level unless you had let too much water through too quickly. I think that the idea was that you could generate electricity quickly.

Took and awful lot of concrete though and the poor sods on the coast had the tide permanently out.

[Tim Streater]

This reservoir of which you speak: where will you put it? This turbine of which you speak? How much power will it generate?

Oh and learn to snip, there's a dear.

[Jethro_uk]

+1

I would call myself a scientist (BSc. Hons) but have great appreciation for engineers, having been bought up around workshops all my life.

Nothing irritates me more than some twatceleb with a third in media studies opining to the world that "if you don't believe in climate change [1], you haven't read the science".

Er, I have, and I don't.

[1]Of course they mean *man made* climate change. Because we've known for centuries the climate changes. Even the thickest green knows there was an ice-age, and now there isn't (and I await the pedants telling us we are still in an ice age ;) )

[John Williamson]

They *may* be right by then.

OTOH, we may have cracked the fusion problem by then, too.

[Nightjar]

On 13/08/2014 15:29, The Natural Philosopher wrote: ...

In 1894 Hiram Maxim managed to build a 3.5 ton, 110ft wingspan steam driven aircraft that produced an estimated 10,000 lbs of lift. It made successful restrained flights, but he was still working on how to control it in free flight when it broke free of its restraints and crashed. However, he did demonstrate that steam powered flight was feasible.

There was also quite a lot of interest in steam powered flight in the early 1930s and at least one steam powered aircraft made several successful flights in the USA.

[John Williamson]

There have also been model aircraft successfully powered by steam.

[Nightjar]

As far back as 1848, but getting a model to fly is a rather different problem from getting a useful sized aircraft into the air. BTW Hiram Maxim was building his aircraft as a carrier for his machine gun.

[harryagain]

You don't really think proper engineers are going to fall for the perpetual motion theory?

There is a system where the tidal lagoon is used to store energy using the turbines as pumps.

[harryagain]

Full of s**te as usual.

When there is fuel to run it.

[harryagain]

Drivel. No-one knows the final cost of nuclear power because no-one has yet dealt with the waste,

[Chris Hogg]

LOL! Of course I don't, as I said, if you'd bothered to read to the end!

So electricity is used to pump water into a reservoir, from whence it presumably flows back out through the pumps, now acting as turbines, to generate electricity? A form of pumped storage, like Dinorwick? I thought that was only viable where you had an electricity surplus at certain times i.e. at night in the UK. If not a pumped storage system, then how does it work?

[Chris Hogg]

Carthorses run on grass, Harry. Free, and green, in several senses of the word. No wonder we don't see many of them about!

[dennis]

From nukes! They can't store it from anywhere else without more CO2 being produced.

[Nightjar]

Which there always will be. We already have the technology to manufacture it from waste products, water and sunlight. It is only that it is not economic to do so at today's prices.

[A. Lurker]

The Natural Philosopher wrote lengthily:

No one ever said that.

Birds are not made-made machines, which is what we are considering here.

He said something which turned out to be wrong; people do it all the time

- not least here on Usenet.

Not so, as the Wright brothers demonstrated in 1903.

What has that to do with regard to an erroneous pronouncement?

Wave and tidal power technology is not new? How far back can you find it?

You sound like someone who'd have told the atom-splitters that their work was all very well but leading nowhere, and have scoffed at the pioneers of flight for their contraptions.

Einstein was forbidden pork, but Kelvin hankered for ham.

But maybe it will.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yep. Carbon fuel is the ideal storage medium as a 'battery' Its just that there are - so to speak - a lot of AAAs lying around ready charged under the ground.

And the cycle efficiency is crap.

[Bill Wright]

Mark my words that boy will hang. My headmaster c1960.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Excellent post. You should be on telly. Tried the BBC?

Bill

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Chris Hogg formulated :

I would guess, it would pump the water to storage at off peak, then use the stored water to generate power at peak. Its a well known and cost effective method.

[Tim Streater]

Well you don't gain much height, do you. That's where the energy is stored. I'd have thought it would be quite inefficient, wasting energy having to accelerate a large mass (the water) and then slow it down again.