Larry Jaques wrote:

more snippage for the scroll wheel impaired

Unlike on/offshore wind farms which give NIMBYs fodder due to their
visibility, tidal generation has a low profile and minimal visibility.
Unlike Wind witch gives NIMBYs fodder with potential bird strikes and
background noise, Tidal generation has no appreciable impact on sea life
and produces no noise. The energy required to build a tidal generation
plant should be vastly less than it's service lifetime generation
potential.

Bird kills are minimal with taller towers, but your regular everyday
buildings with regular everyday windows kill more birds than wind
farms by about a 10:1 (or was it 100:1?) margin.

I didn't say they were valid issues, just something for NIMBYs to rant
about along with noise, views and lower property values.


Unfortunately, there seems to be little focus on tidal generation at the
moment since it's a less visible type of project and therefore has less
PR value.

Blame the power-hungry media for that. (no, headline-power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power Interesting articles.

Isn't the media at fault for anything the government isn't already at
fault for?


IMHO, more cost effective lighting needs to be installed wherever
possible first (or too?) We see all these high-power sodium and
halogen lights, etc., burning -all- the time -everywhere-.

Most any commercial building I've been in recently is pretty much all
fluorescent and / or metal halide type HID.


Lower power requirements for everything electrical should be addressed
as well. More efficient, full-room low-voltage power supplies would
replace the ten warts in each room we have now. g

Hybrid vehicles are making a nice surge, as well they should.

Which is why we need to upgrade the electrical grid so we are able to
move the electricity required to replace a decent amount of gasoline.


I see Soccer Moms everywhere, by themselves, in SUBURBANS (8mpg?) etc.
when they could be using electric vehicles for town driving 4x a day.
I hope more convert.

Some will eventually, when the economics become reasonable. As I noted
in another post, taxes and insurance currently make having a second high
MPG / electric vehicle a money pit, even with purchase subsidies.