On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:15:48 +1200, Gib Bogle
wrote:

Tim Watts wrote:
Seriously... At least it seems more potent, or less impotent than wind
power. There is always demand, so I presume this means they can ramp the
gas generators down a bit which is a good thing.

On paper, tidal power is very appealing. The energy density of moving water is
very high. But as far as I'm aware there is still no commercially viable (i.e.
profitable) tidal current turbine facility in operation. I'm referring to a
turbine that is just plonked down in a spot with high currents, not to a
facility with a dam and/or gates.


Absolutely right. We are at the very early stages of research with
the first full scale trial just getting under way.

I'm disappointed, because I worked in this area back in the late
1970s/early 1980s and it came to a dead end when Thatcher's government
refused to fund trails - of course the country's finances were in an
appalling state in 1979 after 15 years of economic mismanagement.

Thirty years later, we are only slightly further on, and the economic
situation is, if anything, even worse. But now the need is much more
pressing.


The marine environment is very challenging. Highly corrosive, teeming with
life, very high loadings, unfriendly to workers.


The biggest problem for a full scale tidal stream power station is
maintenance of the turbines. That isn't even being addressed in the
current trials. It will probably be at least two decades before a
full scale installation can be contemplated.

Of course, if our research hadn't been curtailed in the early 1980s,
we might now be in a very different position.

It grieves me that successive governments have failed to fund
practical, worthwhile research while ploughing vast £ billions into
completely pointless particle research. The money for the Large
Hadron Collider (and other, previous particle accelerators) would have
been far better spent on research and development of sustainable power
generation.