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What are the downsides of depleting wave energy? How does this impact coastal life, erosion, and beach creation? How would this impact life at sea such as whales? All in all, cool stuff, and likely a very important part of the cleaner (I hate the term clean energy) energy mix.
@@digiryde: Dampening waves would decrease erosion. But the energy extracted is an insignificant fraction. By what mechanism would there be consequences?
Dude, your math skills need improvement. The average US household uses around 29kwH per day. This means you would not feed 1000 homes with the 24k powerplant... Unless you talk about China household, but then this is not mentioned and is quite misleading to your main audience...
@@denverbraughler3948 "By what mechanism would there be consequences?" I do not know, but the one thing I have learned is there are always trade offs. Sometimes they are worth it and sometimes not. I suspect in this case, they will be worth it if it is not overdone (whatever that is). I do know there is research that has already been done on other devices and/or structures that impeded tidal processes that show detrimental effects. I do not think these devices would impede tidal action as much as a wall though. :)
There's been wave power research in the Shetlands and Orkneys, north of Scotland, for over twenty years now. I vaguely remember something from the early/mid 90's where someone showed off technology at the time. What was interesting about it was that the technology actually dissipated some of the wave power so that the waves reaching the shore were less powerful and damaging than they had been before.
The oil price crisis of 1976 triggered UK interest in renewable energy for several years from then. Wind, wave and geothermal were studied but work on wave energy was mostly cancelled after about 1983. Wave was seen as too difficult and too expensive relative to the other two, except for work to support small island communities.
They have just announced that a HVDC cable will be built to connect the Orkneys to the mainland to transmit wind and tidal power to the mainland. I've seen underwater turbines be tested lately.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there. A massive added benefit could be the potential to protect delicate shoreline by tamping down the waves. Parts of the UK coastline are being washed away, especially around Norfolk, with the authorities under pressure to spend billions in protecting houses and coastline. An option of putting wave power mats along those coasts which both generate power and reduce the waves and surge would be a tempting way of spending money to protect the coast rather than having to put massive concrete defences in place.
Pelamis Wave Power. They built 2 devices, one of which remains. They sadly went out of business in 2014. I remember the initial publicity, it was sometimes called the "sea snakes".
Just finished my degree in naval engineer, where we actually did som research and testing of wave generators. The elephant in the room of any energy harvesting is the efficiency, and we struggled to get even 1% efficiency. Meaning that when a wave passes, we extract 1% of it's energy. If you were to have 100% efficiency, then there wouldn't be any waves behind the device at all, which is speculated to be impossible (just like the wind turbine problem of 100% efficiency being physically impossible). But the energy density of waves is huge, so we should be happy to see even 5% efficiency. The best option we saw for minimizing cost was to keep all facilities adjacent to land, so only the kinetic parts was in water, and generators on land. Means that pretty much all maintenance is reduced and can be done from land, also reducing the cost by insane amounts
I'd guess that another benefit of building them close to the shore is that the environmental impact of reducing the intensity of the waves is brought to a minimum. (Implying that the efficiency is high enough to have an impact at all)
Something along the lines of this is what I came to comment. Wave generation might work best in site specific locations where all the hardware except the float would be based on land. Channel locations where a long- arm can dangle over and drop a float into the waves leaving just a fiberglass float in the water would be a very durable solution. I could even see small-scale devices mounted on piers to capture shipping traffic waves in harbors.
On the other hand, that approach limits the technology to coastal sites where waves reach the shore in sufficient strength, and the facilities don't bother anyone...
The best form of WECs has to be the Oscillating Water Column. Zero moving parts in the water and the "spring like effect" of air trapped inside in the OWC minimizes the energy losses between energy conversions. Only problem however is the bidirectional airflow. Current turbines have ~14% efficiency in the most optimal conditions.
In 1980, when I started a vo-tech program to be an electrician, my instructor challenged us to figure out how to harness waves to generate electricity. He said there are a lot of things to overcome but the possibilities were limitless.
Steam is still a highly used power producer from burning fuels as well as using starling generators.. Geothermal can be used to skip those steps as long there is enough water present in those areas however its not very controllable and can be just as dangerous as nuclear fission and also produces toxic water from the vapors just as nuclear power does. There are plenty of outlets to create, but many of them are either bad for everything or just not able to be tamed enough to be worth while.
I have never seen a project with a specific sim that has produced such a wide array of solutions and mechanical styles. I supposed the unpredictability of the waves, and the salt water make this so much more challenging. But wow this is mindblowing.
There was some testing done in Orkney in the north of Scotland. After about a decade of testing, both systems were retired. One thing that caught my eye was that neither system returned in the course of its lifetime the energy spent in making it… I spoke to an engineer who was involved in the project and he explained that the harsh marine conditions, on the one hand, and the slow speeds but great forces exerted, on the other hand, make it very difficult to make a resilient and reliable system. It’ll be brilliant, of course, if a good way was found to harvest wave energy, but I am less optimistic than I used to be that this is a worthwhile approach to renewable energy.
I think its really cool that they made the device smart enough to dive when seas and waves are too powerful to generate power with out damaging the device. THATS GENIOUS! In places where hurricanes are frequent that is a massive protection of your investment.
I love the variety of solutions shown in this video! Reminds me of the “glory days” of automotive and aviation development allowing non-scientists see lots of creative solutions and predict the winners. Kind of like season 1 of Battlebots. Measuring environmental impact looks challenging…. Seems to me there is great potential for coastal areas though I had not considered your point about these systems increasing complexity to the grid. Comparing costs might be tricky using optimized solar and wind designs to the comparatively newer tidal/wave systems. Somehow you need an offset for predicted reductions from development of the newer systems (assuming they prove to be technically and financially feasible). Your videos are consistently interesting to me! Thank you for producing them!
Love the power of the ocean. Couple corrections: sometimes the sea is calm - not often, but sometimes. And weather bouys are a great example of tech that's handled the harsh conditions for decades.
The trouble is that most buoys don’t have complex machinery as a part of them, other than sometimes electronics to measure wave height, temperature etc. which can all be well protected and internal to the buoy thus don’t have to deal with fouling or corrosion. Keeping the moving parts moving and not corroding is tough, any maintenance makes the cost of the technology and by extension the energy that is produced more expensive.
@@sjsomething4936 how are they 2 different things? There are two driving forces producing one event, a wave... whether large or small. Its like you are saying there a 2 different waves?
Nuclear Power is already perfect, it can hardly become better. Anything else needs a lot more effort and the result is "random electricity" no one needs.
@@jayg6138 Nuclear power is non-renewable. The fuel available for reactors even is finite. The sun's rays, the wind and ocean wave moments are not finite.
@@plumcrazypreston2797 Well technically the sun's rays and the wind are finite since the wind is powered by the sun and the sun is powered by fusion. I'm not sure about waves though, but even without the sun the moon would still generate some semblance of tides.
I actually had a renewable energy course where one of our homework assignments was calculating energy output from waves. It depends on the coastline but most coastlines of developed nations are more like 5-10kw/m. The US has an estimated 1170 TWh per year of potential wave energy on the coastlines but 50% of that is in the Alaskan coastline in specific spots and that isn't considering conversion efficiency and transmission. Even including the heavily inflated Alaskan numbers, the US coastline is an estimated 153,646km long from NOAA. So that's 7614.9MWh/km of annual production. Assuming a combined conversion and transmission efficiency of around 80% it would be 6091.92MWh/km. So to power a state like IL which uses 197.6TWh annually you are going to need 32,436.4km of pure wave generation on the coast in high wave areas to power one state, not including spacing between the units and maintained access. You're going to need to consume an absurd amount of the coastline to power just a city. 80% efficiency WITHOUT considering transmission and conversion, just pure kinetic absorption is also insanely high because it would mean you are taking a 10m high wave and turning it into a 2m high wave. Real world efficiencies seem to be in the single digits right now. Realistically, after spending money on marine resistant materials, bearings, and maintenance I have an extremely hard time believing the low cost/kw these start ups are promising. I think this is why all of the actual wave generation facilities deployed have produced far under target or were shutdown or converted to research facilities only. I'd like to be proven very wrong but I just don't think there is that much cheap energy in readily available in waves compared to something like solar and batteries.
In the mid 70’s, I saw a wave-power device that looked remarkably like a single pair of those yellow slats with a single flex-point (?) between them to generate a current. How encouraging that it’s only taken us 50-odd years to string twenty or so of them together. _Go humans!_
There is room for wave power on sites of coastal errosion. I think the best design for this are air rams where the waves act like pistons in tubes and drive tesla turbines to generate electricity. Taking the power out of the wave thereby reduces errosion. The sites would be good for battery storage as well.
I've been thinking up ways to harness wave/tidal energy for YEARS. I used to do thought experiments, imagining machines and strategies for doing this as a way to fall asleep, the way some might count sheep. It's fascinating to see how it may actually be accomplished.
Any video about any renewable energy generation technology must speak about the storage issue. Renewable energy is intermittent, so unless you accept that you laptop/fridge/traffic light/hospital would run only on sunny or windy days, You need to acknowledge that you could have the best wind or solar or wave farm, but without a dependable nuclear/gas/hydro power station the electric grid will collapse.
What happened to the submersible buoys attached to water pumps anchored to the ocean floor? These buoys are 40 meters or so below the surface - out of the way for most boats and protected from storms. The pumps then pressurize water for turbines on the land. I was very impressed with this strategy - began in Australia in early 2000’s.
If it began in Australia you could safely wager that our government (Australian) intervened and either cut funding or sold it to a foreign government or corporation.
Great review of Wave energy generation tech. One company I was hoping to hear you mention or speak about it EcoWave Power which utilizes the coast to collect the energy whilst avoiding most of the harsh conditions of at-sea tech systems. According to them, this saves a ton of cost on deployment and just yesterday they've connected to the grid with the country of Israel. I'd love to hear your take and see your coverage of their technology.
Good to hear you discuss environmental impacts. Biggest problem, I think, is the ocean is unrelenting. So yes it has potential but the installation and maintenance cost are going to keep it at the high end of renewable energy.
I believe the reason it is taking so long is a team effort is required in this field. Once a large team is assembled, time and money will be the only obstacles left
I like the idea of harvesting the oceans infinite movement. I guess harvesting wave power is an obvious way to do it, but perhaps there's a better way. What about harvesting ocean currents? They are strong, they're out of the surf zone, and they're out of the way of being seen. Seems to me, that's where we should focus our attention. Venturi technology could be used to boost the efficiency.
An old idea. Saw it in Popular science (or mechanics?) magazines from the 60/70s. But maintenance, corrosion, and the massive construction costs are still an issue.
The problem would be the effect on the ocean currents. Disrupting the currents which mix earth's oceans would likely result in catastrophic changes to marine life. Just like how we wouldn't put giant turbines in the sky to harness the jet stream in north america because it would catastrophically change our weather patterns, making it much harder to live.
@@baileescott401It would require an absolutely insane rollout of this technology to have any kind of ecological impact. And practically anything we do is looking better than the consequences of our current most popular mode of energy production, where we just light stuff on fire and pretend that smoke doesn’t exist.
I made several inventions in this field, and I even found a manufacturing company which wanted to make a prototype. Fortunately, we had enough common sense to withdraw from this immature project. There are four problems with wave energy: 1. The contraption must be hidden below ocean surface because it looks ugly and may collide with ships. 2. The contraption must dive to avoid destructive storms. 3. The contraption must be made of material which is cheap, strong, and does not corrode. Such material does not exist, but I invented basalt foam which may be suitable for this purpose. 4. High power density (>60kW/m) is available only in southern Australia, southern New Zealand, southern Africa, Scotland and Ireland. Global electricity production is ~3TW. Global wave energy is ~0.5TW - not much. Thermal gradients at the poles provide ~1TW. Solar energy in deserts is controversial because it will compete with huge hydroponic greenhouses. (The greenhouses must be huge to stabilize their internal temperature.) I like geothermal energy and high altitude (>1km) wind energy because they seem to be inexhaustible.
Instead of diving, it could be pulled out of the way, you could have a more secure protective box for it to tuck itself away into in the case of storms.
Interesting stuff :) Just a minor thing on units, in particular energy and power which are related via P = E / t At 8.20, 100kW is enough power for 100 apartments (1kw is often enough for an apartment) Also 24,000kwh/day = 24,000kwh/24 h = 1000kw = 1MW ..thats probably a better way to representing the energy generation potential of these devices.
Years ago they tried wave energy and found that taking the energy out of the waves created ecological damage further along the coast. All forms of energy come with a cost to the environment one way or another, even if it is not obvious.
Any links or anything? Every single form of energy we humans use has environmental impact. I am having a hard time believing that taking the energy out of waves is going to be worse that shading from solar panels, bird deaths from wind turbines, various forms of degradation from oil, and nuclear waste from nuclear energy. It's not like we have the option to just stop having energy. Not in the real world we don't.
seems like there's a plethora of different types of wave power devices though.....so what they did "years ago" probably has no relevance to what they're thinking about now
Love the the videos and learning about the good things happening. Newer to the podcast with your brother and throughly enjoy it as well as they augment each other very well.
Yeah but there is a lag. The waves continue for a while after the wind dies down. Also, the waves travel vast distances. So a storm in the middle of the pacific ocean could power homes in California a couple of days later.
@@flameofthephoenix8395 the moon (and sun also) pulling on water is responsible for the tides. But not the waves. Waves are created by wind blowing over the surface of the water. Earthquakes and/or underwater landslides can also cause waves but that is a different thing (tidal wave, aka tsunami).
@@mckenziekeith7434 Yes, but tides and waves are still interconnected, and affect each other. They don't have a huge effect, but it's still there. And it certainly can be picked up by electrical generators.
You need to minimize the amount of movable parts and make the few parts needed in the power plant durable enough to stay in or close to the corrosive ocean chemistry and harsh weather. It is just so much easier to put up some static solar panels with no movable parts in a dry desert.
A dry desert is not the ideal place for solar panels. Dust is very detrimental for solar panels and deserts tend to be very dusty and with little water available for cleaning that dust off the panels. Deserts are also usually hot and heat reduces the output of solar panels.
Hopefully the scientists and engineers have been in contact with the marine seismic exploration companies, such as PGS, TGS and Shearwater, that have been towing huge amounts of technical equipment through the oceans for several decades. I am sure they have a huge amount of experience that could be hugely informative if shared.
Love your channel, from hydraulic jumps to future tech, such a diverse range of engineering topics and really accessible. You're awesome. It seems like a readily exploitable energy supply; certainly one to keep an eye on.
Every video I watch on this channel is engineering fluff. As an engineer, I hate seeing content spreading excitement for a technology that all signs point to being a terrible, unprofitable method of power generation.
@@phutureproof lol, touché. Real Engineering and Practical Engineering do a fantastic job of covering engineering topics. They focus less on the newsflashy engineering topics because most of those are newsflashy. For example, many channels posted videos about how K-99 was probably not a room temperature semiconductor, but many other baity channels announced how great this could be without any dive into the issues surrounding the paper or its research.
Wave energy is almost unlimited. However, the same applies for wind and sun energy, which are both much easier to access. Its all about which source is the most efficient and wave energy can simply not compete with wind energy.
I love that they claim the devices, which have yet to last one year, would last 20... as mechanically-driven devices exposed to the ocean. You barely get 20 years with solid-state energy devices from quality manufacturers.
I love all of the cool different ways of generating electricity that you cover. I know you or someone else also covered a partly submergible device that was quite large in scale that used turbines in the water. It will be fascinating to see what gets deployed where.
My school was right next to the National Institute for Oceanographic Research, so I did a project on wave power, and its potential, for my Physics CSE. Yes, that’s right, CSE. Back in 1978. That’s 45 years ago. And we’re still talking about it’s potential. I’m not holding my breath.
While I'm encouraged to see that there are other options for capturing sustainable Electricity I believe the real danger is the prevailing storage methods which i believe is mainly "batteries"...Anyone with half a brain should be able to understand that the creation and proper maintenance of batteries is sadly short sighted and is damaging our environment in that they deteriorate and their disposal is so dangerous to the ground water because of decaying polymers and toxic chemicals 😢
I’m concerned about our hasty transition to ‘clean’ energy. A century ago, coal-powered power stations were seen as groundbreaking. However, we now understand the repercussions of using coal. These consequences can be readily quantified with the data we have today. But what about renewables? How significantly are we impacting the ecosystem by halting wind with our turbines, disrupting waves with floating devices, and preventing sunlight from warming the earth with our solar farms? How will these actions affect our environment in 100 years? Or in 1,000 years?
What if what if what if ♻️ There's no chance a building sized windmill is significantly interfering with the atmosphere. Wind moves THROUGH it, it doesn't "halt". Do you know what else disrupts waves? Sea traffic and earthquakes. The sun ceases to warm the "earth" (ground) all the time, it's called a forest canopy. What if what if what if, as carbon fuel actually harms the environment in a way worse than anything green could do.
Thank you Undecided for another great videos, I always enjoy the quality of your videos, thank you for the great work you do to put all of this together. One topic you might find interesting for another video. I remember a few years ago about a thermoelectric in Finland that burns trash, since of all the collected recycled plastic only 5-9% is actually recycled it might be a better solution. Thanks
Was that the one with a ski slope built into the design? Such an innovative solution. Prof Mark Jacobson in "No Miracles Needed" goes into the pros & cons of all our energy options. There's a few major problems with burning rubbish. First being it produces greenhouse gases which we need to reduce asap to mitigate global heating & there's the issue of toxins & black carbon released into the environment. Not all can be captured. I think that facility has a very high chimney stack which help the pollution to dissipate, but doesn't solve the issue of pollution. Jacobson also talks about the garbage patches in our oceans, which are 3x the size of France. We need to keep plastics out of our oceans. Reducing use of plastics & recycling more of it will help. Burying in landfill is one of the least problematic ways of dealing with plastic waste. Maybe there needs to be a tax on plastic use, as they are ridiculously cheap to buy, considering the cost of environmental impacts. We could develop alternatives which have been around for ages, such as hemp bioplastics...which could even be used for car panels. As a bonus growing the hemp sequesters 50% more CO2 per hectare than forest. Hemp also provides high quality nutrition with a seed that contains complete protein & oil, and the fibres of hemp can also be used for paper (so we could stop logging old growth forests for wood chipping to make paper) & durable carbon negative building products. Many solutions. We could do with policies that would help implement them. A carbon fee & dividend, as advocated by James Hansen for decades as the best way to reduce GHGs, would help towards less use & more recycling of plastic, as plastic making is carbon intensive, and currently it costs less to make new plastic than to recycle existing plastics.
Imagine a generator adjacent to land with only a small section in sea. A curtain-like material capable of bending is stretched over a frame which is near the seashore. When the waves hit the curtain the curtain is bent and it transfers the energy to the room it separates from the sea. The room behind the curtain is filled with ferrofluid and the ferrofluid moves back and forth with the motion of the curtain. The fluid passes through a pipe which is surrounded by a coil, and the coil produces electricity. (The curtain is like a membrane separating sea and the ferrofluid.)
Not sure that comparing LCOE of Solar/Wind vs LCOE of WPC are a good measure, although Solar PV/Wind is cheaper they need to be supported with storage infrastructure due to intermittency - when considered together, this will significantly change the LCOE number. Storage is less likely to be required for WPCs because waves are generating most of the time, as you have mentioned. So I would consider that WPCs will reach price parity before it reaches the same level of LCOE as Solar/Wind.
@@josevazquez1042: Apparently you didn’t watch the video: elsewhere, he used MW. You cannot even begin to comprehend 24,000 kWh/day and you are one of he less-informed folks. He just as well should have written 1 MW. Either way, it’s way out of your knowledge base.
The big upcoming renewable energy technology is floating wind. Wind farms up until now have been localised to shallow water environment with turbine monopiles. Trial projects are starting to come through the cracks for floating wind turbines. At the moment they're still cost-inefficient but massive strides are being made. This will allow for mass produced turbines to be placed anywhere, limited only by subsea cable length.
Great as always. Quick question on costs; you mention the LCOE could be about $0.30 per kWh. Seems relatively high compared to current rates. I’m currently paying ~$0.09 per kWh (Georgia). How does LCOE translate into consumer rates?
What you pay mainly comes down to where the power comes from. You still have solar, wind, coal, and other methods that also makes power. This would just add to it so hard to say how much you would actully pay for it, but the benfit is when solar or wind stops - you can continue to produce power over the waves vs having to burn more coal for example.
Yeah, I was also struck by how expensive that is. I'm paying about $0.07/kWh for supply at retail rates so imagining what that kind of cost (if wholesale is even $0.30/kWh) would do to my monthly bill is scary.
@@danielchin8073 Yea most of that would be past along to business than you. Plus they wouldnt charge like that, it would normally either a set fee that the energy company would have to pay at or be set around time frames.
Really Excited For Future!! If we find something that will give the whole world unlimited energy, we have to keep on searching and support whoever finds the idea.
2 problems: 1) As you discussed, they are still looking for the best design. 2) Because the Wave Generators are limited to coastlines, it will require a lot of grid updates and repair costs. Rooftop Solar power actually takes pressure off of the grid. Wave Generation adds pressure.
Wave Generation adds grid pressure? how? It's new and requires the infrastructure, but not seeing it beyond that. Rooftop solar is certainly good but has the Duck Curve problem - and it can actually destabilize grids if it's un-managed variability. i.e. partly cloudy will cause rolling waves of changing generation levels; that the operator *has* to handle. If the grid operators can get near realtime reports of rooftop generation it's fabulous, but most people aren't hooking their systems up that way - giving grid operators access to their stats.
The best way would be to harness power as locally as possible in each area, according to what's most available in each region. Decentralized power is more secure and efficient power. No single point of failure to deny energy to large areas and no huge losses transporting it over large distances. And ownership of power generation should properly reside in each community using it.
@@pixelpusher220 They don't need "most people" to allow access. Maybe one every few dozens of miles is largely enough. It's not like sunlight is going to vary on a house per house basis. Also utilities providers tend to over exaggerate the impact of roof solar on the grid because they want to justify increasing their rate despite less and less centralized production being needed to service homes.
@@Alarios711 partly cloudy days will affect houses differently. Perhaps not individually but definitely in small numbers and that has to be accounted for by the grid operators. As more residential solar comes online it increases the delta sizes that need to be handled.
People have been talking about wave power for years. It has potential but some major downsides are: -pollutants Pieces can break off or degrade quickly in salt water -longevity Salt water is a major enemy of mechanical contraptions. These power stations will need constant maintenance to work properly -plant and sea life Blocking out the sun from a large area of the ocean will have terrible effects for plant and ocean life
What's amazing to me is that Humans managed to engineer and build huge offshore oil rigs to drill and extract oil and gas but we struggle to do the same to harvest wave energy. I'd say there is a use case for utilizing old offshore rigs for harvesting stations.
I am sure there a bunch of off shore drilling locations that can't be harvested because conditions don't allow it. Oil is still king of energy per barrel of oil the amount of KWatts produced is staggering and blows away renewable energy. But I agree if we put our energy into it the ocean could help us...if we take care of it.
The waves in these locations are just too powerful they would destroy form of energy extraction device. Besides it would be very difficult to maintain. See the Pico OWC Wave Energy Converter that was destroyed by powerful waves. Funny thing is that it was actually an on-shore installation. Waves are just way too powerful.
well when the gov keeps giving gas/oil billions of dollars in handouts.....it's not that surprising at all. the only reason it even works at all is because they are funded by the gov, if that money went to any other energy sector it would produce the same and honestly better results.
It took millions of years for solar energy to eventually produce underground hydrocarbons that are very energy dense. After burning through centuries of solar energy fixed in wood, humans switched to extracting and burning through all that stored energy in decades. Fossil fuel producers and consumers don't pay for the massive worsening global harms that arise from making then burning their product.
I'm still in most favor of nuclear energy. That being said, it is good to diversify where we get our energy from, and I've been to the ocean once, it is powerful to say the least. I feel if we can overcome the complications of wave energy generation that it would be a fantastic source, but like you said, the ocean doesn't want us there, it is actively hostile towards us.
Turning old fossil fuels plants into nuclear seems like a great option. We should at least be doing that. Think it is like 30% savings? Make it easier to build. I hear regulations is what is really holding them back. Like some things like a single bolt has to be recorded for instance from what I hear. Unless that bolt is super important... It shouldn't be.
It makes perfect sense why the sharks would be attracted to electrical cables: I learned they were built to sense energy as it’s what movement in the water generates, attracting them to their prey.
I've seen a lot of different groups try to tackle wave energy but a few common issues always crop up. First, the ocean is unpredictable. You can set up a generator in a pool and get decent results but in the ocean you have multiple different waves with different periods. In short a WEC that works with small waves gets ruined by large waves, if it works with large waves its ineffective with small ones. Storms bring debris which often wrecks cables or jams moving parts. The harshness of the ocean can not be understated, it destroys everything given enough time. Second, as mentioned around 4:30, things break down in the ocean. Paints and coatings always wear away and when combined with moving parts they invariably have a shorter lifespan than anticipated. Maintenance also tends to be a sticking factor, both in cost as well as accessibility. Finally, cost is a major factor. 12:50 you explore the cost per megawatt hour and that it will likely take at least 30 years for wave energy to get close to current solar capabilities. I wonder how far solar will get in that time? If you have limited funds to work with offshore doesn't really make sense. It MIGHT make some sense if you don't have the land area for large solar farms but even then we have many buildings, parking lots, and spaces that can still support solar with a little creativity for far less than wave energy. I hear a lot about what "might" happen in the future, I keep thinking of wave energy like "clean coal". Like, sure, we COULD burn coal and use carbon capture and in a perfect world it wouldn't pollute, OR we could use solar and get more power for less cost with less work. At the end of 20 years I feel the grant money given to the CalWave project will have been used with nothing to show for it where a solar installation would have paid for itself multiple times and still be outputting power. I don't see a reality where wave energy is the future no matter how hard they try to force it.
Why don't they right away start to combine solar panels with those flat floating parts? Looke like they're gonna cover large area, so can as well get some added energy from the sun if the water is still?
I’m grateful to listen to a guy who practices what he preaches, thank you. For a critique though; I think that “future proofing” is the most important part of modern construction which gets passed on too frequently. Home building technology is advancing so fast that even over the course of single building projects some fundamentals become obsolete by the time construction has completed. Future proofing to me is upsizing mechanicals and running big conduit from panels to each side of the house including the roof. Cheers and thanks again leading by example!
The main advantage of solar and wind, is its cheap and lasts longer. Its because the biggest threat to wind is just age and solar is dust, which is all easily fixable. While the biggest threat to tidal power is that the ocean is literally accidic and basically melts most metals over a couple of years. So expensive metals and frequent repairs are needed
We could definitely use one of those in Milwaukee. I think the milder conditions would allow a wave generator to flourish in the great lakes. As for salt water, an anode can only do so much. I saw the spot of rust on the generator towards the end of the video.
A friend of mine did research for wave energy that used hydrofoil turbines (instead of using typical flat blades, it used blades in the shape of loops) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. It's still in the early stages of development. The scale model they were using for tests generated so much energy that it broke. I guess that's a good problem to have, lol
Watching sailing vlog channels, you get an idea of how much maintenance is necessary. They need to scrub their hull every 2-4 weeks and repaint every 1-3 years. While it's easy to state that anchorages are a good example of permanent equipment, those are placed in areas usually protected from the waves that are needed.
I always thought of why don't the engineers put turbines on surface level of waves attached with floaters around beaches like no one would go ahead and we will get free energy for some small places or stored energy Then I saw windmill
Matt, one thing I don't understand. You would have thought with all the money that goes into offshore rigs for oil platforms, that these companies would have tried innovating in this area. Why have they not? Did they just decide it was too expensive to try?
Ive been saying that for years. A twenty foot boat will hold twenty people equaling 3700 pounds if you turned that into air compression by wave power thats a hell of a lot of energy with one wave
Wind can slow down or even stop.... Sun stops shining at the end of every day.... Ocean waves NEVER stop and will not stop in any of our life times.... This alone should be the reason why we need to research more and implement the technology of wave power!
From my perspective as a 52 year old, Wave Energy is second only to Fusion in time:promise ratio. I can remember watching a documentary about a cliffside Wave capture installation in Japan in the mid-80s.
Oceanic swells will oscillate ships up and down. So... 2 "ships"... *heavy* and built to survive conditions. Ships that are due to be scraped might work as base for prototype. Something like a ladder between ships, and hinged on the decks.. Keeps ships apart. Mast straight up from deck of one ship. Cable fixed to deck of other ship, runs over wheel at top of mast, and then powers a water lift pump. Mast, gantry and cable form a triangle. Side defined by cable varies depending on where ships are. Cable can be used to drive a car water lift pump. Water lift pump empties water tank. Valve opens to allow sea water to flow into tank past a turbine to generate rotating shaft power. That can be used to drive an alternator.
What degree should i get to get into this kind of field? Theres literally nothing i can think of that would bring me more joy than working on creating more efficient ways to create and store energy
The main thing about any source of power is the energy returned on energy invested (ERoEI). If the amount of energy it takes to build, deploy, maintain and decommission exceeds the power produced over its life, its all counter productive. Ive heard that many tidal power technologies have negative returns (for info so does the production of some biofuels).
All brake-walls could be power generating wave dampeners. This could be a highly deployable system that could also be scaled for various amount of wave energy. Even docs that people have in front of their lake houses could have wave attenuation devices that powered the house just from motorboat wakes and storm waves. All anchored at C power could also be a anchor for multi species, aqua culture, combining, kelp, sponge, and muscles or scallop farming, thus increasing the revenue sources for the system and providing a diverse array of tasks to keep the people employed who watch over the system.
Matt: Idea for new video: COMPARE ALL WAVE POWER TECH/COMPANIES and provide the BEST/ranked list when it comes to LCOE, efficiency, scalability and durability and practicality and also SPEED of which tech could be scaled and deployed!! I'd love to see that list : ))))))
This could be a great technology to help reduce beach erosion and potentially replace lost barrier islands, especially in hurricane prone areas. However, as the moon and earth, and by extent oceans are tidally locked, it would be potentially concerning how mass adoption would affect this balance. As the moon is currently moving away, it is slowing down the earths rotation. It is curious how this would play out on massive scale, and I would love someone to extrapolate it or a possible episode of it. We know that the 3 Gorges Dam had a minor effect on the rotation as it created a substantial new mass where it wasn't before. Could systems like this be used to counteract that affect or make it worse, and what would it mean for future massive hydropower if possible? Great episode and I hope my rambling thoughts will lead to interesting debates. Thanks to you Matt for the channel and scientific forum!
So, what happens when you put a blanket on your pool? Does it change the temperature any? So let's put many thousands of these on the oceans! I love it!
It seems this would be a good fit for desalination. They both take place in the same geography, and reverse osmosis requires a great amount of energy, whereas this produces a great amount of energy.
The problem with all green dreams is they have to be backed up by multiple sources. This effectively doubles or triples the cost and you may still not have 100% coverage. If you use fossil fuel power plants as a backup, they have to operate at low power which is their least efficient and most polluting modes.
The cost of the existing national electric grid is a critical topic as the expansion 5x is the future with centralised concentrated electric power generation.
What do you think of catching waves for power? The first 100 people to use code UNDECIDED at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/undecided.
If you liked this, check out Why This NASA Battery May Be The Future of Energy Storage th-cam.com/video/2zG-ZrC4BO0/w-d-xo.html
What do you think about expressing generation capacity in MW in future videos instead of multiplying MW by 24000 kWh/MWh/day?
What are the downsides of depleting wave energy? How does this impact coastal life, erosion, and beach creation? How would this impact life at sea such as whales?
All in all, cool stuff, and likely a very important part of the cleaner (I hate the term clean energy) energy mix.
@@digiryde:
Dampening waves would decrease erosion.
But the energy extracted is an insignificant fraction.
By what mechanism would there be consequences?
Dude, your math skills need improvement. The average US household uses around 29kwH per day. This means you would not feed 1000 homes with the 24k powerplant... Unless you talk about China household, but then this is not mentioned and is quite misleading to your main audience...
@@denverbraughler3948 "By what mechanism would there be consequences?"
I do not know, but the one thing I have learned is there are always trade offs. Sometimes they are worth it and sometimes not.
I suspect in this case, they will be worth it if it is not overdone (whatever that is).
I do know there is research that has already been done on other devices and/or structures that impeded tidal processes that show detrimental effects. I do not think these devices would impede tidal action as much as a wall though. :)
Wave energy has great potential, but like many new technologies, it has it's ups and downs.
😂
Here take my like.
I saw what you did there! 🤓
Lets hope it's not a wipeout.
I sea what you did there.
There's been wave power research in the Shetlands and Orkneys, north of Scotland, for over twenty years now. I vaguely remember something from the early/mid 90's where someone showed off technology at the time. What was interesting about it was that the technology actually dissipated some of the wave power so that the waves reaching the shore were less powerful and damaging than they had been before.
The oil price crisis of 1976 triggered UK interest in renewable energy for several years from then. Wind, wave and geothermal were studied but work on wave energy was mostly cancelled after about 1983.
Wave was seen as too difficult and too expensive relative to the other two, except for work to support small island communities.
They have just announced that a HVDC cable will be built to connect the Orkneys to the mainland to transmit wind and tidal power to the mainland. I've seen underwater turbines be tested lately.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there. A massive added benefit could be the potential to protect delicate shoreline by tamping down the waves. Parts of the UK coastline are being washed away, especially around Norfolk, with the authorities under pressure to spend billions in protecting houses and coastline. An option of putting wave power mats along those coasts which both generate power and reduce the waves and surge would be a tempting way of spending money to protect the coast rather than having to put massive concrete defences in place.
Pelamis Wave Power. They built 2 devices, one of which remains. They sadly went out of business in 2014. I remember the initial publicity, it was sometimes called the "sea snakes".
was about to say something similar then saw your post, I think it was "Tomorrow's World" that showcased it
Just finished my degree in naval engineer, where we actually did som research and testing of wave generators. The elephant in the room of any energy harvesting is the efficiency, and we struggled to get even 1% efficiency. Meaning that when a wave passes, we extract 1% of it's energy. If you were to have 100% efficiency, then there wouldn't be any waves behind the device at all, which is speculated to be impossible (just like the wind turbine problem of 100% efficiency being physically impossible). But the energy density of waves is huge, so we should be happy to see even 5% efficiency. The best option we saw for minimizing cost was to keep all facilities adjacent to land, so only the kinetic parts was in water, and generators on land. Means that pretty much all maintenance is reduced and can be done from land, also reducing the cost by insane amounts
I'd guess that another benefit of building them close to the shore is that the environmental impact of reducing the intensity of the waves is brought to a minimum. (Implying that the efficiency is high enough to have an impact at all)
Something along the lines of this is what I came to comment. Wave generation might work best in site specific locations where all the hardware except the float would be based on land. Channel locations where a long- arm can dangle over and drop a float into the waves leaving just a fiberglass float in the water would be a very durable solution. I could even see small-scale devices mounted on piers to capture shipping traffic waves in harbors.
On the other hand, that approach limits the technology to coastal sites where waves reach the shore in sufficient strength, and the facilities don't bother anyone...
@@richardmetzler7909 Second part matters less, people can suck it up, but the first bit is a bit of a limiter
The best form of WECs has to be the Oscillating Water Column. Zero moving parts in the water and the "spring like effect" of air trapped inside in the OWC minimizes the energy losses between energy conversions. Only problem however is the bidirectional airflow. Current turbines have ~14% efficiency in the most optimal conditions.
In 1980, when I started a vo-tech program to be an electrician, my instructor challenged us to figure out how to harness waves to generate electricity. He said there are a lot of things to overcome but the possibilities were limitless.
There is nothing the sea will not break.
Steam is still a highly used power producer from burning fuels as well as using starling generators.. Geothermal can be used to skip those steps as long there is enough water present in those areas however its not very controllable and can be just as dangerous as nuclear fission and also produces toxic water from the vapors just as nuclear power does.
There are plenty of outlets to create, but many of them are either bad for everything or just not able to be tamed enough to be worth while.
The possible failures are endless :)
I have never seen a project with a specific sim that has produced such a wide array of solutions and mechanical styles. I supposed the unpredictability of the waves, and the salt water make this so much more challenging. But wow this is mindblowing.
Check out tow in surfing to see massive waves
There was some testing done in Orkney in the north of Scotland. After about a decade of testing, both systems were retired. One thing that caught my eye was that neither system returned in the course of its lifetime the energy spent in making it… I spoke to an engineer who was involved in the project and he explained that the harsh marine conditions, on the one hand, and the slow speeds but great forces exerted, on the other hand, make it very difficult to make a resilient and reliable system. It’ll be brilliant, of course, if a good way was found to harvest wave energy, but I am less optimistic than I used to be that this is a worthwhile approach to renewable energy.
I think its really cool that they made the device smart enough to dive when seas and waves are too powerful to generate power with out damaging the device. THATS GENIOUS! In places where hurricanes are frequent that is a massive protection of your investment.
I love the variety of solutions shown in this video! Reminds me of the “glory days” of automotive and aviation development allowing non-scientists see lots of creative solutions and predict the winners. Kind of like season 1 of Battlebots.
Measuring environmental impact looks challenging…. Seems to me there is great potential for coastal areas though I had not considered your point about these systems increasing complexity to the grid. Comparing costs might be tricky using optimized solar and wind designs to the comparatively newer tidal/wave systems. Somehow you need an offset for predicted reductions from development of the newer systems (assuming they prove to be technically and financially feasible).
Your videos are consistently interesting to me! Thank you for producing them!
I was your seventh like
i agree with you the comparing cost
Love the power of the ocean.
Couple corrections: sometimes the sea is calm - not often, but sometimes. And weather bouys are a great example of tech that's handled the harsh conditions for decades.
But most waves are from the power of wind.
@@homewall744 im not sure thats correct. tides aree driven by the moon
@@PazLeBon tides are driven by the moon, waves by wind. They’re 2 different things.
The trouble is that most buoys don’t have complex machinery as a part of them, other than sometimes electronics to measure wave height, temperature etc. which can all be well protected and internal to the buoy thus don’t have to deal with fouling or corrosion. Keeping the moving parts moving and not corroding is tough, any maintenance makes the cost of the technology and by extension the energy that is produced more expensive.
@@sjsomething4936 how are they 2 different things? There are two driving forces producing one event, a wave... whether large or small. Its like you are saying there a 2 different waves?
Nuclear Power is already perfect, it can hardly become better. Anything else needs a lot more effort and the result is "random electricity" no one needs.
Perfect isn’t the word I’d use lol
@@jayg6138 Nuclear power is non-renewable. The fuel available for reactors even is finite. The sun's rays, the wind and ocean wave moments are not finite.
@@plumcrazypreston2797 Well technically the sun's rays and the wind are finite since the wind is powered by the sun and the sun is powered by fusion. I'm not sure about waves though, but even without the sun the moon would still generate some semblance of tides.
I actually had a renewable energy course where one of our homework assignments was calculating energy output from waves. It depends on the coastline but most coastlines of developed nations are more like 5-10kw/m. The US has an estimated 1170 TWh per year of potential wave energy on the coastlines but 50% of that is in the Alaskan coastline in specific spots and that isn't considering conversion efficiency and transmission.
Even including the heavily inflated Alaskan numbers, the US coastline is an estimated 153,646km long from NOAA. So that's 7614.9MWh/km of annual production. Assuming a combined conversion and transmission efficiency of around 80% it would be 6091.92MWh/km. So to power a state like IL which uses 197.6TWh annually you are going to need 32,436.4km of pure wave generation on the coast in high wave areas to power one state, not including spacing between the units and maintained access. You're going to need to consume an absurd amount of the coastline to power just a city.
80% efficiency WITHOUT considering transmission and conversion, just pure kinetic absorption is also insanely high because it would mean you are taking a 10m high wave and turning it into a 2m high wave. Real world efficiencies seem to be in the single digits right now.
Realistically, after spending money on marine resistant materials, bearings, and maintenance I have an extremely hard time believing the low cost/kw these start ups are promising. I think this is why all of the actual wave generation facilities deployed have produced far under target or were shutdown or converted to research facilities only.
I'd like to be proven very wrong but I just don't think there is that much cheap energy in readily available in waves compared to something like solar and batteries.
Spot on, the short wavelength is part of the problem.
In the mid 70’s, I saw a wave-power device that looked remarkably like a single pair of those yellow slats with a single flex-point (?) between them to generate a current.
How encouraging that it’s only taken us 50-odd years to string twenty or so of them together.
_Go humans!_
Yeah, if we were revisiting the really bad ideas every 5 years instead of 50, it would be pretty depressing.
@@filip9564 why
@@filip9564 Please share your academically backed research that concludes that please.
There is room for wave power on sites of coastal errosion. I think the best design for this are air rams where the waves act like pistons in tubes and drive tesla turbines to generate electricity. Taking the power out of the wave thereby reduces errosion. The sites would be good for battery storage as well.
Possibly could be pared with desalination plants?
Yeah.. Hydraulic and Pneumatic..
Small to medium..
Then scale up..
This is cool and all but we need to push hard for nuclear. Its the best solution for powering society. Solar/wind/water should be supplemental
I said nuclear power is FINITE. The wind, waves and sun are not.
Great video Matt! The resource is diverse and market needs vary, which can lead to more than one winner.
I've been thinking up ways to harness wave/tidal energy for YEARS. I used to do thought experiments, imagining machines and strategies for doing this as a way to fall asleep, the way some might count sheep. It's fascinating to see how it may actually be accomplished.
We need to be developing these for the Great Lakes Now.
Any video about any renewable energy generation technology must speak about the storage issue. Renewable energy is intermittent, so unless you accept that you laptop/fridge/traffic light/hospital would run only on sunny or windy days, You need to acknowledge that you could have the best wind or solar or wave farm, but without a dependable nuclear/gas/hydro power station the electric grid will collapse.
What happened to the submersible buoys attached to water pumps anchored to the ocean floor? These buoys are 40 meters or so below the surface - out of the way for most boats and protected from storms. The pumps then pressurize water for turbines on the land. I was very impressed with this strategy - began in Australia in early 2000’s.
If it began in Australia you could safely wager that our government (Australian) intervened and either cut funding or sold it to a foreign government or corporation.
Great review of Wave energy generation tech.
One company I was hoping to hear you mention or speak about it EcoWave Power which utilizes the coast to collect the energy whilst avoiding most of the harsh conditions of at-sea tech systems. According to them, this saves a ton of cost on deployment and just yesterday they've connected to the grid with the country of Israel. I'd love to hear your take and see your coverage of their technology.
I've seen many wave-related energy videos, but not all of them are perfect solutions. Waves can be endless, but harnessing them is tough.
12:10 There are a lot more square meters of land than there are meters of coastline. The country isn't 1 meter across
Good to hear you discuss environmental impacts. Biggest problem, I think, is the ocean is unrelenting. So yes it has potential but the installation and maintenance cost are going to keep it at the high end of renewable energy.
I believe the reason it is taking so long is a team effort is required in this field. Once a large team is assembled, time and money will be the only obstacles left
I like the idea of harvesting the oceans infinite movement. I guess harvesting wave power is an obvious way to do it, but perhaps there's a better way. What about harvesting ocean currents? They are strong, they're out of the surf zone, and they're out of the way of being seen. Seems to me, that's where we should focus our attention. Venturi technology could be used to boost the efficiency.
An old idea. Saw it in Popular science (or mechanics?) magazines from the 60/70s. But maintenance, corrosion, and the massive construction costs are still an issue.
The problem would be the effect on the ocean currents. Disrupting the currents which mix earth's oceans would likely result in catastrophic changes to marine life. Just like how we wouldn't put giant turbines in the sky to harness the jet stream in north america because it would catastrophically change our weather patterns, making it much harder to live.
Do these things have unintended consequences?
@@baileescott401It would require an absolutely insane rollout of this technology to have any kind of ecological impact. And practically anything we do is looking better than the consequences of our current most popular mode of energy production, where we just light stuff on fire and pretend that smoke doesn’t exist.
Some climate models are now suggesting that the AMOC may be shutting down very soon.
We might be a little late?
I made several inventions in this field, and I even found a manufacturing company which wanted to make a prototype. Fortunately, we had enough common sense to withdraw from this immature project. There are four problems with wave energy:
1. The contraption must be hidden below ocean surface because it looks ugly and may collide with ships.
2. The contraption must dive to avoid destructive storms.
3. The contraption must be made of material which is cheap, strong, and does not corrode. Such material does not exist, but I invented basalt foam which may be suitable for this purpose.
4. High power density (>60kW/m) is available only in southern Australia, southern New Zealand, southern Africa, Scotland and Ireland. Global electricity production is ~3TW. Global wave energy is ~0.5TW - not much. Thermal gradients at the poles provide ~1TW. Solar energy in deserts is controversial because it will compete with huge hydroponic greenhouses. (The greenhouses must be huge to stabilize their internal temperature.) I like geothermal energy and high altitude (>1km) wind energy because they seem to be inexhaustible.
Instead of diving, it could be pulled out of the way, you could have a more secure protective box for it to tuck itself away into in the case of storms.
It is always astounding how good you can explain all those interesting topics, it is clear you put a lot of effort in it!❤
Interesting stuff :)
Just a minor thing on units, in particular energy and power which are related via P = E / t
At 8.20, 100kW is enough power for 100 apartments (1kw is often enough for an apartment)
Also 24,000kwh/day = 24,000kwh/24 h = 1000kw = 1MW ..thats probably a better way to representing the energy generation potential of these devices.
better way to describe is ,,,, waste of time AND MONEY
Years ago they tried wave energy and found that taking the energy out of the waves created ecological damage further along the coast. All forms of energy come with a cost to the environment one way or another, even if it is not obvious.
Not nearly as bad as people drilling into the earth for oil.
“They”?
Isn't it though? What I've seen of the local ecosystem impact at each is that the renewables are harder on local habitats.
Any links or anything? Every single form of energy we humans use has environmental impact. I am having a hard time believing that taking the energy out of waves is going to be worse that shading from solar panels, bird deaths from wind turbines, various forms of degradation from oil, and nuclear waste from nuclear energy. It's not like we have the option to just stop having energy. Not in the real world we don't.
seems like there's a plethora of different types of wave power devices though.....so what they did "years ago" probably has no relevance to what they're thinking about now
Minor thing, don’t quote the tax rebate adjusted number on solar. Rebates are temporary and don’t show actual market cost.
What did the sea say to the sand ?
Nothing he just waved 😂
Why did the sand blush?
Because the sea weed :)
Love the the videos and learning about the good things happening. Newer to the podcast with your brother and throughly enjoy it as well as they augment each other very well.
Aren't waves the energy of wind transfered into the water? Wouldn't we be getting the wind's sloppy seconds?
Yeah but there is a lag. The waves continue for a while after the wind dies down. Also, the waves travel vast distances. So a storm in the middle of the pacific ocean could power homes in California a couple of days later.
I heard the Moon pulling on the water was responsible for it.
Turns out the Moon creates tides; the wind creates waves.
@@flameofthephoenix8395 the moon (and sun also) pulling on water is responsible for the tides. But not the waves. Waves are created by wind blowing over the surface of the water. Earthquakes and/or underwater landslides can also cause waves but that is a different thing (tidal wave, aka tsunami).
@@mckenziekeith7434 Yes, but tides and waves are still interconnected, and affect each other. They don't have a huge effect, but it's still there. And it certainly can be picked up by electrical generators.
Surfer: You want to catch some choice waves?
Scientist: Yes I do
Lol😅 Unlikely duo join forces!
You need to minimize the amount of movable parts and make the few parts needed in the power plant durable enough to stay in or close to the corrosive ocean chemistry and harsh weather. It is just so much easier to put up some static solar panels with no movable parts in a dry desert.
A dry desert is not the ideal place for solar panels. Dust is very detrimental for solar panels and deserts tend to be very dusty and with little water available for cleaning that dust off the panels. Deserts are also usually hot and heat reduces the output of solar panels.
I cant help but wonder about the wear and tear from the parts moving up and down not only constantly, but in salt water and rough seas.
Hopefully the scientists and engineers have been in contact with the marine seismic exploration companies, such as PGS, TGS and Shearwater, that have been towing huge amounts of technical equipment through the oceans for several decades. I am sure they have a huge amount of experience that could be hugely informative if shared.
You should of titled it “A New Wave of Energy Could Power the Future!”
Love your channel, from hydraulic jumps to future tech, such a diverse range of engineering topics and really accessible. You're awesome.
It seems like a readily exploitable energy supply; certainly one to keep an eye on.
Every video I watch on this channel is engineering fluff. As an engineer, I hate seeing content spreading excitement for a technology that all signs point to being a terrible, unprofitable method of power generation.
@@AuxiliaryPanther well at least you brought another suggestion along instead of just whinging, oh wait
@@phutureproof lol, touché. Real Engineering and Practical Engineering do a fantastic job of covering engineering topics. They focus less on the newsflashy engineering topics because most of those are newsflashy. For example, many channels posted videos about how K-99 was probably not a room temperature semiconductor, but many other baity channels announced how great this could be without any dive into the issues surrounding the paper or its research.
Wave energy is almost unlimited. However, the same applies for wind and sun energy, which are both much easier to access. Its all about which source is the most efficient and wave energy can simply not compete with wind energy.
The biggest problem with wave energy is the maintenance due to marine growth.
I love that they claim the devices, which have yet to last one year, would last 20... as mechanically-driven devices exposed to the ocean. You barely get 20 years with solid-state energy devices from quality manufacturers.
I love all of the cool different ways of generating electricity that you cover. I know you or someone else also covered a partly submergible device that was quite large in scale that used turbines in the water. It will be fascinating to see what gets deployed where.
My school was right next to the National Institute for Oceanographic Research, so I did a project on wave power, and its potential, for my Physics CSE. Yes, that’s right, CSE. Back in 1978. That’s 45 years ago. And we’re still talking about it’s potential. I’m not holding my breath.
While I'm encouraged to see that there are other options for capturing sustainable Electricity I believe the real danger is the prevailing storage methods which i believe is mainly "batteries"...Anyone with half a brain should be able to understand that the creation and proper maintenance of batteries is sadly short sighted and is damaging our environment in that they deteriorate and their disposal is so dangerous to the ground water because of decaying polymers and toxic chemicals 😢
I’m concerned about our hasty transition to ‘clean’ energy. A century ago, coal-powered power stations were seen as groundbreaking. However, we now understand the repercussions of using coal. These consequences can be readily quantified with the data we have today. But what about renewables? How significantly are we impacting the ecosystem by halting wind with our turbines, disrupting waves with floating devices, and preventing sunlight from warming the earth with our solar farms? How will these actions affect our environment in 100 years? Or in 1,000 years?
If you exist 100 years in the future and it was a problem you'd be on board with the green lobby 😂
What if what if what if ♻️
There's no chance a building sized windmill is significantly interfering with the atmosphere. Wind moves THROUGH it, it doesn't "halt".
Do you know what else disrupts waves? Sea traffic and earthquakes.
The sun ceases to warm the "earth" (ground) all the time, it's called a forest canopy.
What if what if what if, as carbon fuel actually harms the environment in a way worse than anything green could do.
Thank you Undecided for another great videos, I always enjoy the quality of your videos, thank you for the great work you do to put all of this together. One topic you might find interesting for another video. I remember a few years ago about a thermoelectric in Finland that burns trash, since of all the collected recycled plastic only 5-9% is actually recycled it might be a better solution. Thanks
Was that the one with a ski slope built into the design? Such an innovative solution.
Prof Mark Jacobson in "No Miracles Needed" goes into the pros & cons of all our energy options. There's a few major problems with burning rubbish. First being it produces greenhouse gases which we need to reduce asap to mitigate global heating & there's the issue of toxins & black carbon released into the environment. Not all can be captured. I think that facility has a very high chimney stack which help the pollution to dissipate, but doesn't solve the issue of pollution.
Jacobson also talks about the garbage patches in our oceans, which are 3x the size of France. We need to keep plastics out of our oceans. Reducing use of plastics & recycling more of it will help. Burying in landfill is one of the least problematic ways of dealing with plastic waste.
Maybe there needs to be a tax on plastic use, as they are ridiculously cheap to buy, considering the cost of environmental impacts.
We could develop alternatives which have been around for ages, such as hemp bioplastics...which could even be used for car panels.
As a bonus growing the hemp sequesters 50% more CO2 per hectare than forest. Hemp also provides high quality nutrition with a seed that contains complete protein & oil, and the fibres of hemp can also be used for paper (so we could stop logging old growth forests for wood chipping to make paper) & durable carbon negative building products.
Many solutions. We could do with policies that would help implement them.
A carbon fee & dividend, as advocated by James Hansen for decades as the best way to reduce GHGs, would help towards less use & more recycling of plastic, as plastic making is carbon intensive, and currently it costs less to make new plastic than to recycle existing plastics.
Imagine a generator adjacent to land with only a small section in sea. A curtain-like material capable of bending is stretched over a frame which is near the seashore. When the waves hit the curtain the curtain is bent and it transfers the energy to the room it separates from the sea. The room behind the curtain is filled with ferrofluid and the ferrofluid moves back and forth with the motion of the curtain. The fluid passes through a pipe which is surrounded by a coil, and the coil produces electricity. (The curtain is like a membrane separating sea and the ferrofluid.)
Not sure that comparing LCOE of Solar/Wind vs LCOE of WPC are a good measure, although Solar PV/Wind is cheaper they need to be supported with storage infrastructure due to intermittency - when considered together, this will significantly change the LCOE number. Storage is less likely to be required for WPCs because waves are generating most of the time, as you have mentioned. So I would consider that WPCs will reach price parity before it reaches the same level of LCOE as Solar/Wind.
One reason that I like wave energy is that if we extract energy from the waves before they hit the coast it will reduce erosion.
I hope that you realize that’s a 1 MW generator - which is easier to understand than 24,000 kWh/day.
Pretty sure he used kW instead of MW for casual viewers who are less informed. He knows his stuff.
@@josevazquez1042:
Apparently you didn’t watch the video: elsewhere, he used MW.
You cannot even begin to comprehend 24,000 kWh/day and you are one of he less-informed folks.
He just as well should have written 1 MW. Either way, it’s way out of your knowledge base.
The big upcoming renewable energy technology is floating wind. Wind farms up until now have been localised to shallow water environment with turbine monopiles. Trial projects are starting to come through the cracks for floating wind turbines. At the moment they're still cost-inefficient but massive strides are being made. This will allow for mass produced turbines to be placed anywhere, limited only by subsea cable length.
Great as always.
Quick question on costs; you mention the LCOE could be about $0.30 per kWh. Seems relatively high compared to current rates. I’m currently paying ~$0.09 per kWh (Georgia). How does LCOE translate into consumer rates?
What you pay mainly comes down to where the power comes from. You still have solar, wind, coal, and other methods that also makes power. This would just add to it so hard to say how much you would actully pay for it, but the benfit is when solar or wind stops - you can continue to produce power over the waves vs having to burn more coal for example.
Yeah, I was also struck by how expensive that is. I'm paying about $0.07/kWh for supply at retail rates so imagining what that kind of cost (if wholesale is even $0.30/kWh) would do to my monthly bill is scary.
@@danielchin8073 Yea most of that would be past along to business than you. Plus they wouldnt charge like that, it would normally either a set fee that the energy company would have to pay at or be set around time frames.
I wish I was paying that. Here in California it is already .30 per kWh for end consumers. Or thereabouts. And it goes up every year.
@@mckenziekeith7434 Cali is a different beast, there are other issues going on there xD
Really Excited For Future!!
If we find something that will give the whole world unlimited energy, we have to keep on searching and support whoever finds the idea.
2 problems: 1) As you discussed, they are still looking for the best design. 2) Because the Wave Generators are limited to coastlines, it will require a lot of grid updates and repair costs. Rooftop Solar power actually takes pressure off of the grid. Wave Generation adds pressure.
Wave Generation adds grid pressure? how? It's new and requires the infrastructure, but not seeing it beyond that. Rooftop solar is certainly good but has the Duck Curve problem - and it can actually destabilize grids if it's un-managed variability. i.e. partly cloudy will cause rolling waves of changing generation levels; that the operator *has* to handle. If the grid operators can get near realtime reports of rooftop generation it's fabulous, but most people aren't hooking their systems up that way - giving grid operators access to their stats.
The best way would be to harness power as locally as possible in each area, according to what's most available in each region. Decentralized power is more secure and efficient power. No single point of failure to deny energy to large areas and no huge losses transporting it over large distances. And ownership of power generation should properly reside in each community using it.
@@pixelpusher220 They don't need "most people" to allow access. Maybe one every few dozens of miles is largely enough. It's not like sunlight is going to vary on a house per house basis. Also utilities providers tend to over exaggerate the impact of roof solar on the grid because they want to justify increasing their rate despite less and less centralized production being needed to service homes.
@@Alarios711 partly cloudy days will affect houses differently. Perhaps not individually but definitely in small numbers and that has to be accounted for by the grid operators. As more residential solar comes online it increases the delta sizes that need to be handled.
People have been talking about wave power for years.
It has potential but some major downsides are:
-pollutants
Pieces can break off or degrade quickly in salt water
-longevity
Salt water is a major enemy of mechanical contraptions. These power stations will need constant maintenance to work properly
-plant and sea life
Blocking out the sun from a large area of the ocean will have terrible effects for plant and ocean life
What's amazing to me is that Humans managed to engineer and build huge offshore oil rigs to drill and extract oil and gas but we struggle to do the same to harvest wave energy. I'd say there is a use case for utilizing old offshore rigs for harvesting stations.
I am sure there a bunch of off shore drilling locations that can't be harvested because conditions don't allow it. Oil is still king of energy per barrel of oil the amount of KWatts produced is staggering and blows away renewable energy. But I agree if we put our energy into it the ocean could help us...if we take care of it.
Because they made billions of profits from a single offshore oil rigs. While these machine that harvest wave energy only generate tiny bit of profit.
The waves in these locations are just too powerful they would destroy form of energy extraction device. Besides it would be very difficult to maintain. See the Pico OWC Wave Energy Converter that was destroyed by powerful waves. Funny thing is that it was actually an on-shore installation. Waves are just way too powerful.
well when the gov keeps giving gas/oil billions of dollars in handouts.....it's not that surprising at all. the only reason it even works at all is because they are funded by the gov, if that money went to any other energy sector it would produce the same and honestly better results.
It took millions of years for solar energy to eventually produce underground hydrocarbons that are very energy dense. After burning through centuries of solar energy fixed in wood, humans switched to extracting and burning through all that stored energy in decades.
Fossil fuel producers and consumers don't pay for the massive worsening global harms that arise from making then burning their product.
Thanks Matt! Cheers :)
Wave power has been promised since I was in Primary/Elementary school and I am almost 50.
I'm still in most favor of nuclear energy. That being said, it is good to diversify where we get our energy from, and I've been to the ocean once, it is powerful to say the least. I feel if we can overcome the complications of wave energy generation that it would be a fantastic source, but like you said, the ocean doesn't want us there, it is actively hostile towards us.
Turning old fossil fuels plants into nuclear seems like a great option. We should at least be doing that. Think it is like 30% savings?
Make it easier to build. I hear regulations is what is really holding them back.
Like some things like a single bolt has to be recorded for instance from what I hear. Unless that bolt is super important... It shouldn't be.
Water collums used to be called moon pools by people thousands of years ago, and they were invented thousands of years before that. They're cool
i just started college as an oceanography major and this is the kinda thing i could get a career in
It makes perfect sense why the sharks would be attracted to electrical cables: I learned they were built to sense energy as it’s what movement in the water generates, attracting them to their prey.
I've seen a lot of different groups try to tackle wave energy but a few common issues always crop up.
First, the ocean is unpredictable. You can set up a generator in a pool and get decent results but in the ocean you have multiple different waves with different periods. In short a WEC that works with small waves gets ruined by large waves, if it works with large waves its ineffective with small ones. Storms bring debris which often wrecks cables or jams moving parts. The harshness of the ocean can not be understated, it destroys everything given enough time.
Second, as mentioned around 4:30, things break down in the ocean. Paints and coatings always wear away and when combined with moving parts they invariably have a shorter lifespan than anticipated. Maintenance also tends to be a sticking factor, both in cost as well as accessibility.
Finally, cost is a major factor. 12:50 you explore the cost per megawatt hour and that it will likely take at least 30 years for wave energy to get close to current solar capabilities. I wonder how far solar will get in that time?
If you have limited funds to work with offshore doesn't really make sense. It MIGHT make some sense if you don't have the land area for large solar farms but even then we have many buildings, parking lots, and spaces that can still support solar with a little creativity for far less than wave energy.
I hear a lot about what "might" happen in the future, I keep thinking of wave energy like "clean coal". Like, sure, we COULD burn coal and use carbon capture and in a perfect world it wouldn't pollute, OR we could use solar and get more power for less cost with less work. At the end of 20 years I feel the grant money given to the CalWave project will have been used with nothing to show for it where a solar installation would have paid for itself multiple times and still be outputting power. I don't see a reality where wave energy is the future no matter how hard they try to force it.
Why don't they right away start to combine solar panels with those flat floating parts? Looke like they're gonna cover large area, so can as well get some added energy from the sun if the water is still?
Nice. Can't wait for the future where I can not only see many oil rigs on the ocean, but miles of wave energy converters all over the place
You would have to do this on such a large scale to achieve anything worth producing
I’m grateful to listen to a guy who practices what he preaches, thank you.
For a critique though;
I think that “future proofing” is the most important part of modern construction which gets passed on too frequently. Home building technology is advancing so fast that even over the course of single building projects some fundamentals become obsolete by the time construction has completed.
Future proofing to me is upsizing mechanicals and running big conduit from panels to each side of the house including the roof.
Cheers and thanks again leading by example!
Always the most interesting and thought provoking videos to be found on the subjects that you cover. 👍🏽
This is one of those things that never pops into you mind until someone says it and it just makes so much sense
The main advantage of solar and wind, is its cheap and lasts longer. Its because the biggest threat to wind is just age and solar is dust, which is all easily fixable. While the biggest threat to tidal power is that the ocean is literally accidic and basically melts most metals over a couple of years. So expensive metals and frequent repairs are needed
We could definitely use one of those in Milwaukee. I think the milder conditions would allow a wave generator to flourish in the great lakes. As for salt water, an anode can only do so much. I saw the spot of rust on the generator towards the end of the video.
The Salter Duck was trialed successfully on lake Windermere in England in the 70s/80s.
I've thought about capturing the energy of the ocean waves and current since I was a kid.
Honestly, i thought if we could store and transport energy more efficiently, that would be so dope and hella renewable
Maybe building out pier-like structures to capture wave energy would work? That way, no cables, direct shore access, easier maintenance?
With all these hurricanes lately that output is gonna be crazy
Definitely on board with this.
A friend of mine did research for wave energy that used hydrofoil turbines (instead of using typical flat blades, it used blades in the shape of loops) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. It's still in the early stages of development. The scale model they were using for tests generated so much energy that it broke. I guess that's a good problem to have, lol
Watching sailing vlog channels, you get an idea of how much maintenance is necessary. They need to scrub their hull every 2-4 weeks and repaint every 1-3 years.
While it's easy to state that anchorages are a good example of permanent equipment, those are placed in areas usually protected from the waves that are needed.
I always thought of why don't the engineers put turbines on surface level of waves attached with floaters around beaches like no one would go ahead and we will get free energy for some small places or stored energy
Then I saw windmill
Messing about with tides and waves has unexpected effects. For example beaches don’t get rebuilt by the tides after storms wash them away.
i like the serpent design the best. it seems alot more self contained which would be necessary for longevity in the harsh conditions of the ocean.
Matt, one thing I don't understand. You would have thought with all the money that goes into offshore rigs for oil platforms, that these companies would have tried innovating in this area. Why have they not? Did they just decide it was too expensive to try?
The maintenance costs would be staggering. And 3,500 homes is not many for that huge monstrosity.
Ive been saying that for years. A twenty foot boat will hold twenty people equaling 3700 pounds if you turned that into air compression by wave power thats a hell of a lot of energy with one wave
Wind can slow down or even stop....
Sun stops shining at the end of every day....
Ocean waves NEVER stop and will not stop in any of our life times....
This alone should be the reason why we need to research more and implement the technology of wave power!
From my perspective as a 52 year old, Wave Energy is second only to Fusion in time:promise ratio. I can remember watching a documentary about a cliffside Wave capture installation in Japan in the mid-80s.
Oceanic swells will oscillate ships up and down.
So...
2 "ships"... *heavy* and built to survive conditions. Ships that are due to be scraped might work as base for prototype.
Something like a ladder between ships, and hinged on the decks.. Keeps ships apart.
Mast straight up from deck of one ship. Cable fixed to deck of other ship, runs over wheel at top of mast, and then powers a water lift pump. Mast, gantry and cable form a triangle. Side defined by cable varies depending on where ships are. Cable can be used to drive a car water lift pump. Water lift pump empties water tank. Valve opens to allow sea water to flow into tank past a turbine to generate rotating shaft power. That can be used to drive an alternator.
What degree should i get to get into this kind of field? Theres literally nothing i can think of that would bring me more joy than working on creating more efficient ways to create and store energy
The main thing about any source of power is the energy returned on energy invested (ERoEI). If the amount of energy it takes to build, deploy, maintain and decommission exceeds the power produced over its life, its all counter productive. Ive heard that many tidal power technologies have negative returns (for info so does the production of some biofuels).
“In theory, the US coasts alone-“
Proceeds to literally show my house
All brake-walls could be power generating wave dampeners. This could be a highly deployable system that could also be scaled for various amount of wave energy. Even docs that people have in front of their lake houses could have wave attenuation devices that powered the house just from motorboat wakes and storm waves.
All anchored at C power could also be a anchor for multi species, aqua culture, combining, kelp, sponge, and muscles or scallop farming, thus increasing the revenue sources for the system and providing a diverse array of tasks to keep the people employed who watch over the system.
Matt: Idea for new video: COMPARE ALL WAVE POWER TECH/COMPANIES and provide the BEST/ranked list when it comes to LCOE, efficiency, scalability and durability and practicality and also SPEED of which tech could be scaled and deployed!! I'd love to see that list : ))))))
This could be a great technology to help reduce beach erosion and potentially replace lost barrier islands, especially in hurricane prone areas. However, as the moon and earth, and by extent oceans are tidally locked, it would be potentially concerning how mass adoption would affect this balance. As the moon is currently moving away, it is slowing down the earths rotation. It is curious how this would play out on massive scale, and I would love someone to extrapolate it or a possible episode of it. We know that the 3 Gorges Dam had a minor effect on the rotation as it created a substantial new mass where it wasn't before. Could systems like this be used to counteract that affect or make it worse, and what would it mean for future massive hydropower if possible? Great episode and I hope my rambling thoughts will lead to interesting debates. Thanks to you Matt for the channel and scientific forum!
So, what happens when you put a blanket on your pool? Does it change the temperature any? So let's put many thousands of these on the oceans! I love it!
It seems this would be a good fit for desalination. They both take place in the same geography, and reverse osmosis requires a great amount of energy, whereas this produces a great amount of energy.
The problem with all green dreams is they have to be backed up by multiple sources. This effectively doubles or triples the cost and you may still not have 100% coverage.
If you use fossil fuel power plants as a backup, they have to operate at low power which is their least efficient and most polluting modes.
What is the environmental impact? What materials are used in it's construction? How will it effect the water to have the sun blocked off?
The cost of the existing national electric grid is a critical topic as the expansion 5x is the future with centralised concentrated electric power generation.