@@busog97641 It isn't though. That's the problem. You'd need to build several thousand of these to match just _one_ nuke plant, and there probably aren't a thousand places as good as this in the _world,_ let alone in any one country.
@@WJS774 This is a 'proof of concept' model, not the final production version. So your figures are not really relevant to the real world as it does not account for up-scaling.
Don’t quite understand why you changed the engineers statement “2000 houses” to “2000 houses for a year”. It is just 2000 houses. Could be a year or more. As long as the turbine runs.
The level of even basic science understanding in the UK press and gov't is depressingly bad - most can't tell you the difference between a kW and a kWh
@@kasim7929 the point wasn’t about quantity it was about power vs. energy. No per unit time needed. What you are expressing is correct in this regard, too.
There is a reason the UK will be pioneers in this field, because even with massive taxpayer subsidies the field hasn't taken off anywhere in the world.
So they need 20,000 to possibly just about power Britain. Maybe if they used them as barriers to keep the Dinghy People away. Fake Greens can't add up Pounds or Watts.
Proud to be British. This is exactly one of the industries we need to invest in! I hope if the Government is true to its word, in the next several years, we will world leaders when it comes to green energy. On top of that, I can also imagine that projects/investments like these can bring thousands of well paid jobs to our economy. That said, I think that the Government needs a multi prong approach to projects like these. First, obviously invest in companies like these, and secondly, invest in our energy infrastructure. When that is done, then we should (hopefully) see both a sharp drop in energy bills, as well as a increase in jobs in clean energy.
@@George-zd2gr You need more information on this project, this video is very general. This will show it is not only economically viable but also we have the shipbuilding skills to build them en masse. It made economic sense in 2021 it still does. What does not is nuclear (esp if EDF go bust as is now a possibility) Burning Stuff (oil. gas. coal and waste) and tying our energy prices to the gas prices.
As an island nation these are a no brainer. No need to rely on gas and oil from elsewhwre that needs refining. Edit : the first comment in the thread talks about cost and then recommends the most expensive (by up to over 14 times the cost) non fossil fuel emitting power generation source per megawatt/hr and that's not even dealing with the nuclear waste which costs further billions.
Except for the maintenance costs, on a high-tech new power source thats constantly in motion and in contact with water and harsh conditions, not to mention miles off the cost so you need to sail in maintenance crews, I can't imagine the costs being low at all. Much cheaper to do a mass rollout of SMR's around the country and it will be more predictable and set us up for nuclear fusion when it comes.
Funnily we already don't need to rely on outside oil, should we keep our own oil instead of selling it due to its high quality. Economically makes more sense to sell it and then buy cheaper stuff from elsewhere though.
@@TMHedgehog " Imports of primary oils fell by 2.1 per cent in 2023 but the UK remained a net importer of primary oils at 18 million tonnes, the highest level since 2014." - uk gov you really know what youre talking about, dont you?
My questions....1) How much does it cost per kwh to generate? 2) How efficient is it at converting power into energy? 3) How much is the initial capital investment? 4) How long will one of them last? 5) How much with the grid upgrade cost? 6) How many locations around the UK are suitable for this to work? The initial interviewee referred to the location as being a pinch-point with a high tidal flow.....my fear is that there won't be too many such locations.
Just replying so I can save your comment for later @nautilusshell4969. These are some very sensible questions that could be tweaked and then applied to many other issues, and that need to be answered.
The initial capital is high thats why it hasn't taken off like wind farms. If all the answers to your questions were good answers this technology would've dominated a long time ago. Reality is, wind farms are far better return on investment so people throw money there for now.
Question 0) base level, how huge will government subsidies be to get this off the ground, and then how high will the lock-in electricity prices have to be to keep it going.
They expect to be paid a minimum wholesale price of ~£250 per MWh, nearly 5 times as much as wind or solar power. Their latest project from AR5 wants ~£280 per MWh. It isn't cheap & it can't be scaled up as there are only so many places that have a sufficient tidal flow to generate a reasonable amount of electricity. It is niche & outrageously expensive.
Five times the cost seems about right for all the complexity. Can green energy (e.g. hydrogen) be imported for about twice the price of local solar/wind generation? Imports and seasonal storage is the competition.
@@plinble I think that using cheap off-peak electricity to make efuel would be cheaper. We are already occasionally, for short periods, able to supply all our electricity from renewables & nuclear; the only reason we burn fossil fuels during these periods is to export to the continent. The amount of offshore wind capacity is set to double over the next 5 years from areas either already under construction or granted permission but still in the planning stage. There are enough proposals to double capacity again. Add in one nuclear power station under construction, another being planned & by the mid-'30s we will often be producing far more electricity than we can use. Soak up that extra capacity by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, creating green hydrogen & combine to make efuel.
Well that's what people say about all new technologies. Reminds me of my mom, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is what can go wrong. Not one thing about an ingenuity or creativity or future potential.
@@boblatkey7160 Nope. I remember as a child 40 years ago watching TV programmes telling us that wave & tidal power were the future & yet they are still not there. Like fusion, they have been 'just around the corner' for decades. These experimental technologies are financed by a levy added to our power bills. Offshore wind has been steadily reducing in cost until the latest projects are almost as cheap as burning fossil fuels. By all means keep on experimenting & try to refine the technology. Just do not expect us to go all in and commit to large scale tidal power until the cost can be reduced to at least less than nuclear power.
@@boblatkey7160 yes it's worth remembering that PV cost even more than this when it was new and now is ridiculously cheap. But there are limits on how cheap this is likely to get and it's not clear how competitive it will ever be. They are building two more projects so I guess we'll see how those go.
2:16 "unlike solar and wind, the tides never stop". Well, they do! There are significant 'slack tides' 4 times a day. And, in fact, tides generally spend more of their time in slackish conditions than in high flow. But he has a point: the output from tides is highly predictable - unlike solar and wind. If you can also predict demand, then the storage requirement can be calculated fairly precisely
Not correct. They move slowly for as long as they move quickly. 1/12 of tidal range each side of high tide and 1/12 each side of low. The tide is moving appreciably for 2/3 of the time and always moving to some extent.
@geoffreyofmonmouth9796 What's the operating depth required for this device? The blades are 20m, and the Severn goes upto 50m so should be fine. But if this concept works then why not scale down the size of it. There's a huge amount of energy waiting to be harnessed in the Severn. There's also plenty of industry and skills in south Wales and Bristol waiting to manufacture. They will no doubt provide more jobs than the gas and oil giants. I'm all for clean energy and well paid jobs.
There are many places where tidal runs could generate significant power, especially if multiple smaller installations were achievable. I would suggest Jack Sound between St David's Head and Skomar Island, off the tip of West Wales would be a good place to trial another installation.
What's more brilliant is the akademik lomonosov. The smallest nuclear power plant in the world that even floats. It can power up to 120000 home a year. The largest nuclear power plant is Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, this can power up to 14000000 homes a year with a very low green house gases while in production. This is why we need to focus on nuclear. Wind/tide turbines are not a good long term investment because they have a cap on how good they can be. Where as nuclear and new energy systems will come a d be a lot stronger with a high cap on how good they can get. Wind will always lose and the UK has the right idea but will ultimately fail
@@dougaltolan3017 good to hear, but that's a long time away when Orkney (due to the non-stop wind and the wave/tidal test facility) have loads of excess power to send to the grid :-(
For years I still cannot understand the negativity towards tidal power. There are locations in this Country and instantly I think of the River Severn and even the Menai Straits between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland in North Wales.
I too support it bur what I hear on top of what Streaky says it is very difficult to key things running in sea water, the environment is just very harsh. I think that there is a large tidal barrier in Europe somewhere (France?) but they've decided not to expand because of the cost and difficulties.
@@eddyd8745 well they've been testing it in Scotland for decades now so oddly enough the experience they have plus off shore oil rig engineering that has happened ever since they discovered oil offshore it should be allright for 15 years or so.
@@eddyd8745 The only way these systems will work will be at massive scale. You'd want enough of these in a fairly small area so it would make sense to have people that can work on them living there along with having a crane ship that can work on them. You'd want to pull them out of the water to do inspections and clean them off. If you've only got a couple dozen that is too expensive. If you've got hundreds of them then its worth it. Depending how long it takes to swap them out you could also just tow one out and disconnect to tow it back to shore and you just do any work that needs to be done on shore but again you want scale. If you are only working on a couple dozen that gets expensive. If you are dealing with hundreds of them you can have crews that just work on them year round. That is the same reason building lots of nuclear reactors in one location ends up driving down costs. You always have people working on something.
What I find unbelieveable is that what is essentially tidal hydro power has not been exploited sooner. The North Sea empties and fills four times a day, so why not put tidal generators on the base of all maritime wind turbines? So far the only operational tidal generator is in the entrance to Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Water is around 800 times denser than air, so mechanically far more efficient and powerful than wind. Tides too are entirely predictable (and constant, as reported) something mariners have known for centuries. Still, the Orkney project is a step in the right direction, so let's hope the new government really gets behind it.
@@DM-ur8vc This has not been a particlar problem for the NI installation, and there are now very effective preservation systems for protection against salt water corrosion. Underwater installations are generally minimally affected by waves and weather, so the damage you're referring to applies to the numerous variations of surface tide and wave generators.
Safe to say that every obvious idea has actually been had by professionals already. Such a turbine in the tower of every wind turbine would, at least historically, have presented poor value for money. They cost much more than wind turbines and generate less electricity. At a time when we’ve desperately needed to improve our clean energy capacity, it is good that we didn’t limit wind deployment by tying it to tidal.
I read an article about tidal installations a while back and one of the main push backs was from environmental groups about the affect it would have on marine life,;wildlife getting injured by the machinery, noise confusing migrating Wales etc?
Because it’s not economically feasible and there are other generation technologies that are superior. Other people far smarter than you or anyone else in this comment section have modeled the costs of these assets for years.
@@tomwantshelpRight. There is a bit of an obsession with “alternative” assets like hydrogen or tidal energy for some reason, and they tend to be surrounded by conspiracies. There is a universe of candidate generation technologies. We know what is successful and economic, and what isn’t. Personally I can’t possibly see why a combination of wind, storage, and demand-side response with low-carbon gas is not far superior to any of this nonsense.
I mean there's no such thing as 100% pure clean energy. The manufacturing process surely used a lot of greenhouse gas, and there will be ongoing upkeep, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning, which will be very expensive and resource-intensive.
@@artfx9Tidal is vastly underrated. So are those new tech small scale reactors as an alternative to full nuclear power plants that don’t need uranium but still deliver a high amount of power while not occupying as much land as solar needs that aren’t roofs despite recent improvements
Had something similar being trialed near here. It was only there for a couple years, and when they removed it, it was almost unrecognisable from all the life that had grown on it. Stuff like this will need an insane amount of maintenance.
Yes because as we all know coal and gas fired power stations require no maintenance whatsoever, and the coal just digs itself up anyway. Maybe you need to spend ten years living downwind from a coal fired power station, see if that stops you reciting every bit of oil industry propaganda you get brainwashed with repetitively on facebook.
@@thornerg2 Marine growth rates will vary with location: faster in the tropics than the Arctic, for example. So it's not entirely irrelevant, but it's fine if you don't want to say. Very high tidal ranges could be Nova Scotia, South Korea, Alaska or various parts of the UK.
(1:30) "This model can power a small town *for a year."* 🤦🏼 It could power ~2000 homes for the entire lifetime of the generator, not just a year! Why is it that there isn't a journalist in every news organization that has a minimum of a GCSE-level understanding of the difference between power and energy, who can do a story like this without looking like an imbecile?!
Looks fabulous. The engineering problems can be overcome - oil rigs somehow deal with issues people are raising in the comments - bad weather, corrosion etc. Main thing stopping tidal being viable is vested interests (read: fossil fuels companies) trying to say it can't be done.
@@user-vg6df2hi8n - not in this case, the link upgrade (to 220MW) is already approved and commissioned, works start later this year and the build is slated to complete by 2027.
@@didfet5496 With the new electrolysers you lose 25%, not 75%. Production of hydrogen is being looked at for some offshore wind farms. It’s not easy to justify financially because the loss hurts the economics. There’s not much money to be made in renewables unfortunately. Only way to fix the financials is to pay a lot more for power.
It is difficult to communicate how great a feat this power station is. We've tried harvesting wave and tidal energy in Norway for decades and they've all been crushed by the immense forces at play. Well done UK!
So how much scaleup is realistically possible? 2 MW is not even 1 Wind Turbine. Would love to hear some insights about how many of those could be planted in a specific area and how much costs might decrease over the years. Comparing those costs to Offshore Wind Parks + Storage + Backup Capacity would be what is needed to really get a feeling for the feasibility of these kind of projects.
2:28 This is the great thing about renewables it's a job creator and local economy booster and them we can sell it across the world and make lots of money
Another great massively taxpayer subsidised renewable 'job creator', like with the only post installation jobs being cleaning the solar panels, or changing the oil in wind turbines, or picking up the pieces when a tidal project starts to disintegrate.
@@speedymccreedy8785 why would they need subsidies, they aren't oil companies. The jobs are in building them, maintenance of most power stations is relatively low compared to the power generated for all forms of energy, in terms of Hydroelectric practically nonexistent, I wouldn't call that a disadvantage, it reduces cost for the consumers. Furthermore why would it disintegrate are you just pretending there is a problem so that you don't have to challenge your views.
So you think oil/gas is not heavily subsidized? The US alone provides 3 billion in direct subsidies, that's not counting tax breaks and military protection of corporate assets overseas. The whole first gulf war was just a giant oil and gas protectionist operation so "friendly" counties controlled the oil fields not Iraq. The less reliance we have on that geopolitically unstable area the better. It might cost more up front, but when the next large scale conflict in an OPEC+ region breaks out, you can shrug because it won't effect your cost of living....
From what I read online, tidal energy is far from a constant 24/7. Like solar it follows a predictable pattern. Seems it produces useful power perhaps 14hrs a day in positive and negative flow pulses throughout the day. Generally two high and two low. But it only produces peak power (the number they advertise) during the pulse maximums. And there is inadequate flow for useful power 10 hrs a day. The power grid requires 24/7 power, not periodic pulses of power. Hence the need for storage. But storage at scale is not a thing yet. IE, tidal is not the answer -- but it can be a dependable part of one. Probably better than solar or wind as it doesn't suffer from unpredictable clouds or calms.
this unit look cost more than a wind turbine, unless it cheaper and produce more power than a wind turbine it will be limited to a tech demo product. this is not new technology
All power generation systems have different maintenance requirements. The marine environment has particular challenges but this is why we need to run prototypes to work out the realities. If the balance of costs, including maintenance, means this isn't worth doing then it won't happen ... investors need to be convinced by evidence. If the engineers and got it right and the numbers work then it will happen.
"This could power a small town for a year"? Surely some mistake, it must be made to last for more than a year. I imagine it could power a small town for at least a few decades if its maintained.
@@Littlelamb2023maybe but "for a year" is an odd way to say all year round. I think it does show that the presenter or script writer doesn't really understand the distinction between power and energy.
I have seen a similar concept on the information sticker displayed on new cars for sale here in Canada. It will say the car uses say 8 litres of gasoline per 100 kms or around $3000.00 per year in fuel. This gives the buyer an estimate on the cost of fuel for this car for one year. The customer may decide that is too much to spend on fuel for one year and will look at a car that better suits their fuel budget. For some folks, the yearly cost of fuel is more meaningful than knowing the car uses 8 litres of fuel per 100 kms.
@@fraservalley9027 "For some folks, the yearly cost of fuel is more meaningful" That would require knowing how many miles or km have been or would be driven. Since the auto manufacturers cannot know this, they can only advise "8 litres of fuel per 100 km" then YOU do the math.
@@speedymccreedy8785 you really went through all the comments and just openly admit you dont know what your talking about its quite wild how people like yourself think its a good look
I'm glad to see that there is work being done on tidal energy. I live in South Florida and just off our coast is the Gulfstream current. It is a consistent, untapped power source. I've been saying for years that a system that could capture some of that power would be a sure bet.
I had a friend that was a prof at University of Hawaii trying to build similar wave energy tech. Hawaii has one of the highest cost of energy, they ship in oil. The more these ideas can advance, the better!
Not really. Only works for 2 lots of 6 hours per day and they shift forward around 30 minutes each day. Gas or nuclear works 24 hours at and rate you want it.
@@mrfr87 you know what reliable means, you've literally said it happens every day 🤦♂️ that is reliable as it comes. Also tide doesn't stop or that would mean the moon would stop for 12 hours a day. The only time tide is moving only slowly is for about half an hour at high tide when there is slack tide. Due to water being 800 times denser than air the times for the tide means that it produces a lot of energy.
In the world of power genertion reliable is 24h a day and with the ability to fluctuate on demand. Electricity is useless/unreliable unless you can generate it exactly when you need it. Excessive electricity generation when you don’t need causes negative power prices which can make some so green energy uneconomically viable. Gas and nuclear are miles ahead in terms of reliable electricity. I don’t understand how you couldn’t see otherwise.
@@mrfr87 Gas is only reliable until someone turns the tap off, and our own gas fields start running out. Currently we are importing gas by ship, that's not a reliable source.
There's a big difference between the capabilities of a wind farm, and a tidal generator like this. The wind farm only makes power when the wind is blowing within it's specified range. Tidal generators such as this are capable of producing their rated output 24/7, good weather, or bad it will keep producing. The wind turbines main drawback is that it is capable of producing it's rated output only within a narrow range of specific conditions. Just a photovoltaic panels will only produce their rated output when conditions are just right. And just right conditions only come about a few times a day at best !
@@dahamsta QUOTE: En masse comes from French literature, from the phrase "in mass." In this case, mass means "all the people." So, when you do something en masse, everyone does it together. Voting en masse means an entire group of people votes the same way. If you are building a thing and a lot of them - its on mass.
The conditions where they can be placed are super limited, a great idea for somewhere like the video shows, but nowhere near as applicable on a country-wide scale as wind or solar is
Amazing stuff. Some of the problems, and why this hasn't been done sooner, weren't mentioned in this short report. The problem is corrosive power of the sea to the generators, we don't have many things that can withstand long term exposure to sea water. We don't know how they fare long term, the cost of maintenance. the ratio cost to build and maintain is high to the low output (10 of these would only power 20,000 homes). There is no mention of the carbon cost in the supply chain, either. Not knocking it, but we have to see the full picture. The answer will come from investment in multiple areas of renewables, including nuclear power. Solar power has been getting cheaper and cheaper every year, as is wind, and they are less expensive to put up and don't have to deal with seawater corrosion and highly specialized crews. Nuclear power is very much needed in the mix for the next 120 to 200 years as we transition from fossil fuels, and then we will perfect all these types of pure renewables like tidal, and perhaps even revolutionary energy in fusion power
The UK, as a result of its North Sea oil and gas projects and the Offshore Windfarms, has a depth of experience with marine engineering that is second to none. The corrosion problems can't be overcome indefinitely, but they can certainly be overcome economically. The missing link, as well as grid upgrades, is storage. Tidal power is predicatble, but intermittent and might arrive when demand is low, so cracking the storage conundrum is key.
Quite apart from corrosion, the growth of weed / fouling / crustaceans on the blades significantly affects efficiency of underwater turbines. That is the difference between this and other tidal energy projects: the working parts can be easily lifted out of the water for maintenance / cleaning.
@@tlangdon12 Fortunately the storage requirements in respect of tide "changeover" are relatively brief and are well within the capability of existing technology.
All looks great until someone discusses the cost of the grid upgrades and the cables. I'm guessing it's billions and billions at a time when the UK is having to squeeze its belt. Also, the Swansea tidal turbine has gone nowhere and there's been talk about that for decades.
@@speedymccreedy8785The change in the grid needed for Orkney is "simply" a bigger connector/cable to meet the supply that windy isle can produce. For the rest of the grid the change needs is because coal power stations were in the middle of the country and gas, nuclear etc are on the coast
"There's a familiar chorus of criticism when it comes to renewable energy - what happens if the sun doesn't shine or the wind is calm?" You can supplement with hydro or less-clean energy. You don't have to replace all coal/NG power generation, you only need to reduce it. The ol' "what happens when .." argument is the equivalent of "I can't use it 100%, so why bother trying?" level of reasoning.
The issue is renewable proponents constantly speak of replacing and not supplementing. That's why we look to pump the brakes on the utter insanity with real questions like "What happens when?" Stop your rhetoric.
Strangford Lough Tidal Turbine located in Northern Ireland, UK, was the world’s first commercial-scale tidal energy project. It was commissioned in July 2008 by a subsidiary of British tidal energy company Siemens, Marine Current Turbines (MCT). The 1.2MW project uses MCT’s SeaGen turbine technology and required a total investment of £12m ($23.8m). The project involved installation of two 600kW turbines, which was completed in June 2008 and produced 150kW of electricity to the grid in July 2008. SeaGen generated electricity at its maximum capacity of 1.2MW for the first time in December 2008.
And they got bought by Altantis and some turbines installed in the Irish Sea. But seabed turbines are really hard to service and cost much more than this Orbital design (£350/MWh). I don;t think they are going to get many more design wins
So it's very expensive, doesn't produce that much energy (as a prototype), is very circumstantial to build, doesn't work with our existing electrical grid, and due to the natural corrosion of the sea will require huge amounts of constant maintenance. I'm not seeing this as a golden ticket to sustainability outside of very specific applications, but there are simply better bang for buck options out there as much as one can respect the efforts of the company. It is a hard sell.
I worked on a oil platform in the Cook Inlet which has similar tides. The movement of tides left a similar wake when flowing. If the turbine can stand up to the harsh reality of salt water this will be amazing.
What may work is a "pillars of the sea" type solution. Have lined up pillars some 40m apart and lower a grid of modular turbines into the water on toothed guide rails at the side of the pillars. On stormy days bring them up to a safe height e.g. 100ft/ 30m.
This will be a hoot seeing them try to scale this up, there aren't enough taxpayer subsidies in the world for that. 2000 homes a year, they get more electricity out of Fred Flintstones pedal car running down a step hill.
Why can't they just give us the MW output over the day when the tides turn and show us a graph so we can see how that power moves with the state of the tide.
Except when it's at slack water, you know when it's at either high or low tide then there's zero output. I'd hate to rely on that for say your oxygen generator! "Hey Bill, the generator is going down again be prepared to hold your breath for 20 to 60 minutes sorry about that"!
So the grid(interconnector) can not handle energy produced from Wage generation... get rid of an old power station and plug it into it`s interconnector
He's talking about the power of the oceans. Although you could measure the current flows and estimate the volume and mass of water flowing through there to get an approximation of the power available just in that channel.
What he really means is that it's beyond _his_ human comprehension. I can only imagine what he would think of a nuclear plant that produces over a thousand times as much power as this thing. It would blow his tiny mind. 🤣
2 MegaWatts is indeed far from human comprehension. It is the power of about 30 or 40 modern car engines running at full tilt. Watch a motorway for a minute and you comprehend it. A drop in the ocean, no pun intended.
The big unanswered question is reliability. The North Sea is a very harsh environment. Will these keep working relatively maintenance free for 20 years like wind and solar? The cost per mega watt hour is high, but predictability of generation is a big advantage.
@@nirodper it's moored - barnacles on the hull are not a problem. The blades lift out of the water for maintenance. It's been working since 2021 so they appear to have the cleaning under control.
This tech at 2MW could power around 650 homes while we continue wanting our dinner at 8 in individual homes. But i like how this is "rounded' to 2000 and then to a small town (10,000ish). 😂. For this we'd need a few more and some (preferably local) battery systems (physical or chemical) that could buffer the power mismatch.
In British English, 'for a year' would be taken as meaning 'per year' (or 'each year') in this case. Also for the average person it gives a point of reference and understanding that it's not power generated in a given instant but energy used over a time period.
When I was a kid around the mid-80s, I had a book showing the concept of a tidal turbine saying, "maybe one day we can do this". And now it's become reality. What a time to be alive!
G'day, Looks great. There might not be too many places which are as "ideal" as the spot shown though, Globally.... And, as with ALL Tidal Power Systems, Corrosion and Storm-induced Structural Overloads and Fatigue-Failure Will prove Difficult to Engineer around, Within the limits of Commercial profitability. Typically, the Prototypes fail relatively quickly, then the next attempt lasts longer, and when a Weather Event, or Algal Bloom, destroys the third iteration - that's when the Investors go looking for something Less expensive to de-bug & Perfect... In my observation. Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
@@PrinceRules64 G'day, Thanks ! One does admit to being a bit of an Oddball..., I do pay the Rates on the hundred-acre Endangered Species Sanctuary within which I reside, off-grid ; I've been out here for 33 of my 63 years, and a Goal is to be able to pass as being a competent Smartarse (because it's the incompetent Smartarses who are the intolerable ones...?). 23 Playlists, 5.5k Sub's, 2.11 million Views, 3.4k Uploads...; No Computer, this never-monetised Channel runs on a Prepaid Mobile Phone. No Post-production Editing. Shoot-In-Sequence to Edit-In-Camera. Audio recorded in Realtime While the Shutter rolls. Seven Playlists of Wildlife Encounters, sorted by Species. Where I come from, I'm literally The Fool On The Hill..., Someone has to do it ; And my Doorstep is literally Vertically-superior to Every Rooftop around, for 15 Km in all directions (!). My YT Channel is my only Internet presence. Please feel free to Backtrack me, To Fact-check moi. (lol). Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
A lot of comments (justifiably) confused by the 2,000 homes statistics. It wasn't expressed clearly. To clarify, 2MW is only enough for 1,000 kettles instantaneously, so this does seem daft. However, the grid has the capacity to store excess energy for times of greater demand. Hence, if the tide generates more energy during off-peak hours, it will be stored. This process is not 100% efficient, otherwise the turbine would power many more than 1,000 homes. :)
Dear Brits, please push this! We need more nations, developing smart and advanced technologies to harvest energy from clean sources without any impact on the nature.
If the built two dozen of the these plants in that channel there would definitely be an impact on nature. Just like the wind farms kill thousands birds every year these would undoubtedly kill many forms of aquatic life every year. We should not expect energy production to be 100 percent safe for wildlife however we should make attempts to minimize wildlife losses with every cost effective means possible. This requires science to discover effective low cost solutions to discourage the wildlife from entering hazardous areas. I do not think wind / solar / wave energy can fully replace the capacity of fossil fuels but we do need to integrate these solutions into the power grid. I truly believe that small modular nuclear power plants are the most logical short term solution to replacing fossil fuels. Having certified mass produced small power plant designs allows for maximizing public safety while minimizing production cost's and we need to push our governments to evaluate and approve the safe designs and allow them to be built. The other technology that needs continual research is in the field of cost effective energy storage solutions. Energy storage is the key to maximizing the effective use of renewable energy solutions only by capturing excess energy when it is available and using it when it is not available can we make the most use of these technologies.
you think this doesnt impact nature? So I have a bridge in Maryland to sell you, its slightly used, may have some structural damage but is still a bridge...
Just over 6 hours per tidal cycle, so they stop 4 times a day. The max output would be for approx 2 hrs mid tidal cycle, so quoted max output would be approx 8 hrs a day tapering to zero on slack water for approx 4 hrs per day. Somehow don’t think the whole story is being told here, if it’s so good why hasn’t it been done already?
oh wow you're right, we should ignore that power source and never find any useful application for the gigawatts clean free energy it does produce for 12 hours out of every 24.
@@optimist3580 The Strangford one supposedly added 150kW to the grid from 1.2MW turbines.. so about 12% output relative to theoretical max, due to all the slack water. Nevermind the maintenance. The key words in this report were 'investment vehicle'.. prepare to get rug-pulled if you put cash anywhere near these.
Oh but we do see a change in energy bills. We saw them spike spectacularly when gas supplies were affected by the Russia/Ukraine situation or by oil prices set by OPEC or by war in middle east. Nowadays in the UK you can buy your electricity on a flexible tariff and save money by using it mostly when electricity is cheap. There are even some days when there is so much renewable generation that electricity is free ... or a small payment is made to you as a consumer for each kWh you consume!
Hang on now.... 2 mega watts for 2000 homes is only 1kW per house. That is VERY little for a developed country. Maybe this will power 400 homes at best.
It'll likely be based on an average 24hr period. My base load is usually only 200-300 watts for fridge, freezer, lights, computer, and then peaking to 2-3kw to run the oven or the kettle, but then dipping lower at night. On average it is well under 1kw. Using electricity for water and space heating will skew this higher, but on an average population over 24 hours, 1kw is probably reasonable.
OK professor doctor that guy chris. Gee I bet the engineers who designed and built the thing sure are glad you read on facebook that tidal energy don't make enough completely free power to be of any use to anyone for anything, especially not based on your probably very accurate guesstimates on power consumption.
@djotter I live in a single level 1200 Sq ft home with all electric appliances. During the summer months, I can hit 2000kWh for the month, so averaging over 66kWh per day. This equates to just under 3kW per hour, way over the 1kW per house they plan on providing from this generator. Now if ALL my appliances and heat came from gas, and my AC was alternative, then it's very possible to use so little.
@@thatguychris5654 Are you in the US? 66kWh/day is a _lot_ by UK standards. Even a heat pump+EV household with teenagers in the UK is more like 35kWh/day.
@@thatguychris5654 Average UK household electricity is 2700kWh or 300W averaged over the year. Most people heat with gas (11,500kWh) and nobody has AC. Electricity is expensive ($0.3/kwh) and homes are small
"There's a familiar chorus of criticism when it comes to renewable energy - what happens if the sun doesn't shine or the wind is calm? But that certainly isn't the case when it comes to tides, which always ebb and flow." Just like the sun stops shining at night, the water stops moving at the high and low tides, known as slack water. The total amount of solar irradiance per day is equivalent to around 7 hours of peak sunshine, the total amount of water movement (velocity rms) is around 66% of the peak tidal flow.
When I worked offshore, I would observe a 500-ton standby ship being lifted up and down several feet even on a calm day, imagine how much electrical / Hydraulic power you would need to simulate that same motion of that ship in a dry dock. so how about a huge flywheel ( scale the size up to whatever is possible) connected to the seabed the up and down motion of the waves on the ship / giant barge spins the flywheel coupled to a generator forever.
Cool. With just 13,499 more, we could power every home in Britain. Until the gas gets cut off and everyone needs to heat their homes and cook with electricity, and charge their cars, that is. Will need a few more thousand to power the factories, hospitals, office blocks, prisons, schools etc etc. Should keep somebody busy for awhile
You think the Tories funded this 😂 EU Horizon Europe fund In November 2023, Nova Innovation won €20 million in funding from the EU Horizon Europe fund to install a 16-turbine tidal energy farm in Orkney. The project, called SEASTAR, will be the world's largest tidal turbine farm and will build on the success of Nova's Shetland Tidal Array, the first offshore tidal array in the world. Abundance Investment In 2019, Abundance Investment provided £7 million in funding to Orbital Marine Power to help construct the O2 turbine, the world's most powerful tidal turbine. The O2 turbine launched in 2021 and has been operational since July of that year. It's expected to generate enough electricity to power 1,700 UK homes and offset around 2,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
@@Turtytreeandaturd Ah yeah England is going to steal all of Scotland's wave power ay? Never mind we're British that was unified under a *Scottish* king. You speak divisive nonsense, likely for some dictator as the enemy of all British.
Hi. Hmmm. This is a nice idea, but I see one big problem. If they need a "big grid upgrade" then this is actually a "big taxpayer subsidy" in disguise. If this were a genuine commercial project then they would be generating enough revenue to build their own supply network. No need to wait guys, just crack on and get it built with your own money. Generating electricity in some remote location is all well and fine, but if the costs to get that to the consumer is too high then it makes no sense. 10x of these would generate 20MW, by comparison Sizewell B is 1198MW and C will be 3260MW. Combined, this is 223x bigger and is producing power on the doorstep of SE England on a 100% duty cycle, 24 hours a day. Technically, good job 🙂 Commercially not so good I think 😞 Brian.
@@krzysztofjan4214 Thanks for the reply. Just to be 100% clear since my statement was a bit ambiguous - I didn't mean the whole grid, just a connection to it of course. Shall we have a little dig into the costs? The Eday tidal generator cost £10M, and they want to have 10, so that's £100M for the machines. Eday to the mainland is 30 miles by sea, and at the very low end it's £2M per mile for a sub-sea cable. So the install cost is at least £60M, (possibly 5x - 10x more depending on the cable needed and the sea bed conditions.) Also to note - maybe the connection from John O' Groats to civilization also needs an upgrade, but they can have that for free on me. So at the bottom end we are looking at £160M to generate 20MW, making £8 per Watt. The video doesn't mention it, but I will bet you my lunch this 2MW is the peak output not the average (divide by sqrt(2) to convert if you fancy it) Now look at Sizewell B. Build cost £2.5B and it produces 1198MW, making it £2.10 per Watt. So if we did this for the whole UK, your electricity bill would be about 4x bigger. Fancy that? I thought not. But the national grid just isn't interested. They can do the same maths as me. The costs just don't make sense. All the best, Brian.
Hi Brian, we’re going to need to upgrade the grid no matter what because we cannot reach net zero without offshore wind, which is already having similar issues. These industries have very small margins for obvious reasons (competition + the imperative of keeping customer costs low). Offshore wind is extremely cheap and we’re growing our capacity rapidly. The necessary grid connections are not just about getting electricity to the Scottish mainland, or from John O’Groats to Inverness, or even from Inverness to the central belt. Scotland is going to produce more energy than it can use and needs to export that to England, but the grid does not have capacity. And even then, we need upgrades basically everywhere as the grid has not received sufficient investment for decades and we need to electrify transport and heating (and probably much of heavy industry). You are quite right that nuclear has several advantages over offshore renewables: total reliability, some limited dispatchabllity, generally shorter transmission distances. It also has huge capital costs, high electricity costs (compared to wind and solar, admittedly not tidal), skills shortages, and extremely long delivery times. Hinkley Point C is currently estimating 12-14 years between construction starting and completion, and over twenty once you factor in all the pre-construction negotiations and approvals. I personally think Hinkley C and Sizewell C will play an important role in our energy system, but we won’t see Wylfa B (which of course is also in a remote location) or new plants at Oldbury or Bradwell before 2045 at best, by which time we’ll have basically decarbonised the grid plus land transport plus domestic heating. Unfortunately those 30 years we lost between construction starting in Sizewell B and construction starting on Hinkley Point C have severely handicapped our nuclear capacity.
@@tomwantshelp Hi Tom, thanks for the info, I have to agree with you that our nuclear programme has been a real mess. In essence our politicians just don't think much beyond the next few years, so the decisions just get put off and off. If we really want to hit net zero and still be able to afford to run your fridge, then nuclear is about all we have. I do wonder though, we talk about net zero but China and India keep building more coal power stations, and just don't care. If we shut down UK PLC tomorrow and sank beneath the waves, it would make pretty much zero difference to the global CO2 levels. COP xyz with their "transformational agreements" come and go but the C02 measurements at Mauna Loa don't show any change. Our net zero seems nothing more than kicking ourselves in the groin to me. Ah well. Brian
Unfortunately it's a tiny amount of energy. 2MW is nothing. A single modern wind turbine is around 10MW. Even the proposed 20MW from 10 tidal machines is the equivalent of 2 wind turbines. It just won't be a priority for grid upgrade because it's too small. Priority projects will be orders of magnitude bigger.
"2MW, enough for 2000 houses for a year". What a bunch of bull! 2MW for 2000 houses is 1000 w for each house- that's enough for each house to have a toaster on, and nothing else. Try to run your hour house on 1000w. "For a year"- that makes no sense. If the generator can power houses, than it can power them for as long as its running, not "for a year". "Tide never stops" - also insane thing to say. Have they never been to the ocean? It stops every 6 hours!! This reporter is not too bright, but I bet he's got the climate figured out.
You're right that this is woefully underwhelming compared to nuclear power or even legacy fossil fuels, but the power that houses use is actually less than that, since your toaster isn't on 24/7. The average house uses about 3,000 kWh of electricity each year, which works out to an average of less than 350W - though obviously peaks a _lot_ higher for short periods like when you boil the kettle.
@@WJS774 The nuclear power station has an implied insurance contract with the government and the owner of the nuclear plant pays nothing for that insurance. If they went onto the private market to get an insurance contract to cover the cost of a possible Fukushima/Chernobyl event, the cost would be horrific. The nuclear power station is way MORE expensive.
2:15 I'm sure I can't be the only one to mention this, but "the tides never stop", is true, but they only run fast for about 6 hours twice daily. When the tide is turning, there is no flow, so no power generation.
Oh no, it's ok. They have a coal burning power plant burning coal at full power all the time for when the tides slowly turn and slowly turns strong enough again. Problem solved. 😏
2 megawatts? R.E. Ginna puts out 582 megawatts. So if they can find enough good tidal flow areas to put up 296 of these things, they will match the smallest nuclear power plant in the US.
@@Jehty_ not if you ask a supplemental question - what does each cost in fuel to produce 1mW? Remembering of course that uranium doesn't just flow past the power station naturally, you have to use fossil fuel powered vehicles and machines to extract the raw material, refine it and transport the refined fuels to the reactors. And that fuel has to be extracted, refined and transported too. Very quickly tidal becomes orders of magnitude more efficient than anything else. If you're being honest about it, that is. Then there's a bigger question, which one would you rather live close to? (hint. ask the surviving former residents of Chernobyl.)
@@Jehty_ Never, also factor in decomissioning these systems after their duty cycle and this is where atomic energy loses. Tidal Power will not create junk that stays toxic to everything living vor 10 thousand years or more
My point was that they need to scale this up hundreds of times just to match the SMALLEST nuclear plant in the US. Then they would need thousands more to match the others. And those nuke plants only supply 20 percent of US power generation. And these turbines could never match a nuclear generator in longevity. There are a lot of people in the comments acting like this solves some sort of problem created by energy use. What this might do, maybe, is partially solve a problem caused by using "green" energy, in certain specific places.
We require a mix of renewables here in the UK and across the world. We don't need (or want) all our eggs in one basket. We already have more power produced from renewables in the UK than from fossil fuels even without tidal power ... but let's add this into the mix if it has proved economic to do so. I'll give you some real-time electricity generation figures for the UK today as I type this at 12pm: The fossil fuel proportion of today's generation is entirely from gas and is presently making up just 7% of the total. 30% is from wind and 21% is from solar, 18% from nuclear and the rest is from biomass and from imports. In my own location in the UK today we have 96% "zero carbon" generation. I suggest you start lobbying your state and your national government to make some similar progress. Spend less of your own energy on delaying essential change and put more into making energy transition happen!
I remember the Cardiff bay electricity generating promises many years ago, they were talking about generating 3000 MW (3 times the amount of electricity that a nuclear power-plant generates!)! What happened after billions of pounds was wasted on that silly project?
While Orbitals 2MW weights about 700 metric ton, Minesto operating in Faroe Islands and soon Holyhead have a tidal turbine of 1m2MW at 28 ton, that also works in much slower currents (more available locations) than the =2 needs. It would be right out criminal to our nature to waste ~350 tons of steel per MW when we can do it with only 23.
I was surprised that the new HVDC connectors in that part of the world didn't get a mention ... there is also a huge windfarm (Viking) which is now coming on stream from Shetland which will be sending power to the south. The distribution and access to/from the grid requires to be upgraded in various locations but it is wrong to assume that our grid capacity overall needs to immediately increase ... it comes as a surprise to many people to learn that our UK generation and consumption is less in 2024 than it was in 2005 ... we've actually got capacity!
It doesn't need the grid to handle it. More focus needs to be given to modular and localised energy supply. Generators like this don't need a single centre of generation, such as a power station. Thousands could be dotted around our coastline where power is needed.
Renewable energy (excluding hydro) is about volume of turbines rather than the size of each individual turbine. We’re going to need to upgrade our grid no matter what. It’s more expensive than wind and solar but likely to come down in price as more is deployed. Am I missing any other downsides?
Looking at the energy this produces 2000 homes was extremely optimistic as well.. Realistically it would power around 200-400 and if those home owners have electric cars then it’s powering a fraction of that again.
When Stephenson built the rocket did people stop and say na it only carries 2 people give up. No they thought the whole world could use this on a grand scale.
They should have heaters onboard to melt down plastic when they have excess energy being produced. Could even turn them into factories for commonly used items assuming theres very minimal carbon output
About time Orbital Marine Power got a bit of attention outside of Scotland
It has had previous coverage across the UK, not recently admittedly. Tidal power has never received the attention or investment it warrants in the UK.
Yes, even here in the states.
This power needs to be scalable.
@@busog97641 It isn't though. That's the problem. You'd need to build several thousand of these to match just _one_ nuke plant, and there probably aren't a thousand places as good as this in the _world,_ let alone in any one country.
@@WJS774 This is a 'proof of concept' model, not the final production version. So your figures are not really relevant to the real world as it does not account for up-scaling.
Queue james bond villian for total destruction and a plot of control the world's energy creation.
Don’t quite understand why you changed the engineers statement “2000 houses” to “2000 houses for a year”. It is just 2000 houses. Could be a year or more. As long as the turbine runs.
Beacause the journalist isn't a scientist...
The level of even basic science understanding in the UK press and gov't is depressingly bad - most can't tell you the difference between a kW and a kWh
@@paulhorton5612 'h'? lol.
2000 houses a year per year!
@@kasim7929 the point wasn’t about quantity it was about power vs. energy. No per unit time needed. What you are expressing is correct in this regard, too.
British engineering at its best. We should have done this years ago. And be pioneers in this field.
*Scottish
Exactly!
@@ScottishRoss27 Scottish are British, you miss history class Ross? King of Scotland unified the nation.
@@V01DIORE
British is a political ideology as its a political union.
There is a reason the UK will be pioneers in this field, because even with massive taxpayer subsidies the field hasn't taken off anywhere in the world.
If we as a country don’t ramp this up and get it make it happen then it would be criminal. This is brilliant.
we won't, oil and gas money is deeply rooted into government pockets
Can never work without huge taxpayer subsides, so you pay for it.
So they need 20,000 to possibly just about power Britain. Maybe if they used them as barriers to keep the Dinghy People away. Fake Greens can't add up Pounds or Watts.
@@speedymccreedy8785 private investment 🤦♂️ do you even know how capitalism works? Yes the gov can invest too.
@@speedymccreedy8785thats OK. We can build it, run it and own it. Keeping our taxes in our country. Thats how it works.
Proud to be British. This is exactly one of the industries we need to invest in! I hope if the Government is true to its word, in the next several years, we will world leaders when it comes to green energy. On top of that, I can also imagine that projects/investments like these can bring thousands of well paid jobs to our economy.
That said, I think that the Government needs a multi prong approach to projects like these. First, obviously invest in companies like these, and secondly, invest in our energy infrastructure. When that is done, then we should (hopefully) see both a sharp drop in energy bills, as well as a increase in jobs in clean energy.
Couldn't agree more, I just hope it makes economic sense to generate energy this way!
@@George-zd2gr You need more information on this project, this video is very general.
This will show it is not only economically viable but also we have the shipbuilding skills to build them en masse.
It made economic sense in 2021 it still does.
What does not is nuclear (esp if EDF go bust as is now a possibility) Burning Stuff (oil. gas. coal and waste) and tying our energy prices to the gas prices.
*Scottish
@@ScottishRoss27 Scottish are British, you miss history class Ross? The King of Scotland unified the nation.
An 'industry' that can only survive with huge taxpayer subsidies and lock-in contracts to sell electricity at exorbitant prices.
As an island nation these are a no brainer. No need to rely on gas and oil from elsewhwre that needs refining.
Edit : the first comment in the thread talks about cost and then recommends the most expensive (by up to over 14 times the cost) non fossil fuel emitting power generation source per megawatt/hr and that's not even dealing with the nuclear waste which costs further billions.
Except for the maintenance costs, on a high-tech new power source thats constantly in motion and in contact with water and harsh conditions, not to mention miles off the cost so you need to sail in maintenance crews, I can't imagine the costs being low at all. Much cheaper to do a mass rollout of SMR's around the country and it will be more predictable and set us up for nuclear fusion when it comes.
How are they a no-brainer when alternative assets like batteries, wind, DSR are far more economic and have been actually tested at scale?
@@ukwatotskuhide270Right, and even before SMRs, there are still a range of candidate assets that are preferable to tidal.
Funnily we already don't need to rely on outside oil, should we keep our own oil instead of selling it due to its high quality.
Economically makes more sense to sell it and then buy cheaper stuff from elsewhere though.
@@TMHedgehog " Imports of primary oils fell by 2.1 per cent in 2023 but the UK remained a net importer of primary oils at 18 million tonnes, the highest level since 2014." - uk gov
you really know what youre talking about, dont you?
My questions....1) How much does it cost per kwh to generate?
2) How efficient is it at converting power into energy?
3) How much is the initial capital investment?
4) How long will one of them last?
5) How much with the grid upgrade cost?
6) How many locations around the UK are suitable for this to work? The initial interviewee referred to the location as being a pinch-point with a high tidal flow.....my fear is that there won't be too many such locations.
Only sensible comment ive read here so far
Just replying so I can save your comment for later @nautilusshell4969. These are some very sensible questions that could be tweaked and then applied to many other issues, and that need to be answered.
The initial capital is high thats why it hasn't taken off like wind farms. If all the answers to your questions were good answers this technology would've dominated a long time ago. Reality is, wind farms are far better return on investment so people throw money there for now.
Seawater environment are challenging, so I expect not as long as you'd expect.
Question 0) base level, how huge will government subsidies be to get this off the ground, and then how high will the lock-in electricity prices have to be to keep it going.
They expect to be paid a minimum wholesale price of ~£250 per MWh, nearly 5 times as much as wind or solar power. Their latest project from AR5 wants ~£280 per MWh. It isn't cheap & it can't be scaled up as there are only so many places that have a sufficient tidal flow to generate a reasonable amount of electricity.
It is niche & outrageously expensive.
Five times the cost seems about right for all the complexity. Can green energy (e.g. hydrogen) be imported for about twice the price of local solar/wind generation? Imports and seasonal storage is the competition.
@@plinble I think that using cheap off-peak electricity to make efuel would be cheaper.
We are already occasionally, for short periods, able to supply all our electricity from renewables & nuclear; the only reason we burn fossil fuels during these periods is to export to the continent. The amount of offshore wind capacity is set to double over the next 5 years from areas either already under construction or granted permission but still in the planning stage. There are enough proposals to double capacity again. Add in one nuclear power station under construction, another being planned & by the mid-'30s we will often be producing far more electricity than we can use.
Soak up that extra capacity by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, creating green hydrogen & combine to make efuel.
Well that's what people say about all new technologies. Reminds me of my mom, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is what can go wrong. Not one thing about an ingenuity or creativity or future potential.
@@boblatkey7160 Nope. I remember as a child 40 years ago watching TV programmes telling us that wave & tidal power were the future & yet they are still not there. Like fusion, they have been 'just around the corner' for decades.
These experimental technologies are financed by a levy added to our power bills. Offshore wind has been steadily reducing in cost until the latest projects are almost as cheap as burning fossil fuels.
By all means keep on experimenting & try to refine the technology. Just do not expect us to go all in and commit to large scale tidal power until the cost can be reduced to at least less than nuclear power.
@@boblatkey7160 yes it's worth remembering that PV cost even more than this when it was new and now is ridiculously cheap. But there are limits on how cheap this is likely to get and it's not clear how competitive it will ever be. They are building two more projects so I guess we'll see how those go.
2:16 "unlike solar and wind, the tides never stop". Well, they do! There are significant 'slack tides' 4 times a day. And, in fact, tides generally spend more of their time in slackish conditions than in high flow. But he has a point: the output from tides is highly predictable - unlike solar and wind. If you can also predict demand, then the storage requirement can be calculated fairly precisely
Not correct. They move slowly for as long as they move quickly. 1/12 of tidal range each side of high tide and 1/12 each side of low. The tide is moving appreciably for 2/3 of the time and always moving to some extent.
look at rule for tides the 12 rule and it show how and when they flow
@@59patrickw "1/12 rule"? WHy bother with arbitrary threshold constructs for simple people's minds, it's sinusoidal; easy to work with.
@@Cous1nJackThats great, as long as no one wants a cup of tea during slack tides, the original comments criticism still stands
Onto the Severn Estuary then
Not deep enough there. Tidal lagoons would be better. Orbital is great for deep-ish water with high flow rates like Orkneys, Anglesey etc
@geoffreyofmonmouth9796 What's the operating depth required for this device? The blades are 20m, and the Severn goes upto 50m so should be fine. But if this concept works then why not scale down the size of it.
There's a huge amount of energy waiting to be harnessed in the Severn. There's also plenty of industry and skills in south Wales and Bristol waiting to manufacture.
They will no doubt provide more jobs than the gas and oil giants.
I'm all for clean energy and well paid jobs.
There are many places where tidal runs could generate significant power, especially if multiple smaller installations were achievable. I would suggest Jack Sound between St David's Head and Skomar Island, off the tip of West Wales would be a good place to trial another installation.
@@BoyeeSmudger there’s huge tidal heights which complicates mooring chain lengths. IIRC
This is brilliant
Yes.
You don't often here the word 'brilliant' associated with projects that require huge government subsidies
@@speedymccreedy8785 Its not an SNP ferry project!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@speedymccreedy8785OK then, let's tax the bejesus out of the gas and oil giants. Simples.
What's more brilliant is the akademik lomonosov. The smallest nuclear power plant in the world that even floats. It can power up to 120000 home a year. The largest nuclear power plant is Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, this can power up to 14000000 homes a year with a very low green house gases while in production. This is why we need to focus on nuclear. Wind/tide turbines are not a good long term investment because they have a cap on how good they can be. Where as nuclear and new energy systems will come a d be a lot stronger with a high cap on how good they can get. Wind will always lose and the UK has the right idea but will ultimately fail
xlinks are planning a 3.6GW interconnect from a solar farm in Morocco to UK.
An upgrade to the Orkney installation isnt rocket science!
Government, political dissensions, laws, environment....
@@johumm455 except that a 220MW interconnect was approved in 2021 at a price of £400 million, expected to come on line ~ 2027
@@dougaltolan3017 good to hear, but that's a long time away when Orkney (due to the non-stop wind and the wave/tidal test facility) have loads of excess power to send to the grid :-(
For years I still cannot understand the negativity towards tidal power. There are locations in this Country and instantly I think of the River Severn and even the Menai Straits between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland in North Wales.
Because it's extraordinarily expensive, destroys the marine environment and will get absolutely battered to bits? Other than that, great.
I too support it bur what I hear on top of what Streaky says it is very difficult to key things running in sea water, the environment is just very harsh. I think that there is a large tidal barrier in Europe somewhere (France?) but they've decided not to expand because of the cost and difficulties.
@@eddyd8745 well they've been testing it in Scotland for decades now so oddly enough the experience they have plus off shore oil rig engineering that has happened ever since they discovered oil offshore it should be allright for 15 years or so.
@@eddyd8745 The only way these systems will work will be at massive scale. You'd want enough of these in a fairly small area so it would make sense to have people that can work on them living there along with having a crane ship that can work on them. You'd want to pull them out of the water to do inspections and clean them off. If you've only got a couple dozen that is too expensive. If you've got hundreds of them then its worth it. Depending how long it takes to swap them out you could also just tow one out and disconnect to tow it back to shore and you just do any work that needs to be done on shore but again you want scale. If you are only working on a couple dozen that gets expensive. If you are dealing with hundreds of them you can have crews that just work on them year round. That is the same reason building lots of nuclear reactors in one location ends up driving down costs. You always have people working on something.
Remember the other negative to tidal power that was not mentioned in the video. Slacktide.
Tidal is not 24/7.
What I find unbelieveable is that what is essentially tidal hydro power has not been exploited sooner. The North Sea empties and fills four times a day, so why not put tidal generators on the base of all maritime wind turbines? So far the only operational tidal generator is in the entrance to Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Water is around 800 times denser than air, so mechanically far more efficient and powerful than wind. Tides too are entirely predictable (and constant, as reported) something mariners have known for centuries. Still, the Orkney project is a step in the right direction, so let's hope the new government really gets behind it.
@@DM-ur8vc This has not been a particlar problem for the NI installation, and there are now very effective preservation systems for protection against salt water corrosion. Underwater installations are generally minimally affected by waves and weather, so the damage you're referring to applies to the numerous variations of surface tide and wave generators.
Safe to say that every obvious idea has actually been had by professionals already.
Such a turbine in the tower of every wind turbine would, at least historically, have presented poor value for money. They cost much more than wind turbines and generate less electricity. At a time when we’ve desperately needed to improve our clean energy capacity, it is good that we didn’t limit wind deployment by tying it to tidal.
I read an article about tidal installations a while back and one of the main push backs was from environmental groups about the affect it would have on marine life,;wildlife getting injured by the machinery, noise confusing migrating Wales etc?
Because it’s not economically feasible and there are other generation technologies that are superior. Other people far smarter than you or anyone else in this comment section have modeled the costs of these assets for years.
@@tomwantshelpRight. There is a bit of an obsession with “alternative” assets like hydrogen or tidal energy for some reason, and they tend to be surrounded by conspiracies.
There is a universe of candidate generation technologies. We know what is successful and economic, and what isn’t. Personally I can’t possibly see why a combination of wind, storage, and demand-side response with low-carbon gas is not far superior to any of this nonsense.
Now THAT is actual clean energy! 💚
I mean there's no such thing as 100% pure clean energy. The manufacturing process surely used a lot of greenhouse gas, and there will be ongoing upkeep, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning, which will be very expensive and resource-intensive.
@@CarnifaxMachine Yes, but in comparoson to other BS green energy, this one takes the cake.
@@CarnifaxMachineWe can also change that too
@@artfx9Tidal is vastly underrated. So are those new tech small scale reactors as an alternative to full nuclear power plants that don’t need uranium but still deliver a high amount of power while not occupying as much land as solar needs that aren’t roofs despite recent improvements
Had something similar being trialed near here. It was only there for a couple years, and when they removed it, it was almost unrecognisable from all the life that had grown on it. Stuff like this will need an insane amount of maintenance.
Yes because as we all know coal and gas fired power stations require no maintenance whatsoever, and the coal just digs itself up anyway. Maybe you need to spend ten years living downwind from a coal fired power station, see if that stops you reciting every bit of oil industry propaganda you get brainwashed with repetitively on facebook.
Where was 'here'?
@@xxwookey That's irrelevant. But it's one one the highest tidal ranges on the planet. A massive current 4 times a day.
@@thornerg2 Marine growth rates will vary with location: faster in the tropics than the Arctic, for example. So it's not entirely irrelevant, but it's fine if you don't want to say. Very high tidal ranges could be Nova Scotia, South Korea, Alaska or various parts of the UK.
Not much different than keeping a ship in the water
How to harness gravity! Brilliant!
(1:30) "This model can power a small town *for a year."* 🤦🏼
It could power ~2000 homes for the entire lifetime of the generator, not just a year! Why is it that there isn't a journalist in every news organization that has a minimum of a GCSE-level understanding of the difference between power and energy, who can do a story like this without looking like an imbecile?!
Annoying isn't it?
They pick journalists for their ability to spout propaganda, not their brains.
Looks fabulous.
The engineering problems can be overcome - oil rigs somehow deal with issues people are raising in the comments - bad weather, corrosion etc.
Main thing stopping tidal being viable is vested interests (read: fossil fuels companies) trying to say it can't be done.
I don’t think that’s true - the main issue is competition with wind. There has also been too much focus on wave power which has been a complete dud.
You're probably both correct
And how much profit does an oil rig create and how much this tidal generator?
Overcoming engineering problems is one thing. Paying for them the other.
@@Jehty_ Saving the planet is worth a couple extra bucks if you ask me.
@@jsmit9484 not if other planet saving technologies are better and cheaper.
Brilliant bit of kit.👍
Brilliant - begin upgrading the grid now - and bring it on
You're joking, Governments work very slowly.
@@user-vg6df2hi8n - not in this case, the link upgrade (to 220MW) is already approved and commissioned, works start later this year and the build is slated to complete by 2027.
Much better than windmills!!! What a fantastic solution by using the tides!! Bravo Scotland!!!
Definitely better than windmills. Windmills only ground grain into flour 🙂
If it cant be plugged into the grid, why not make something like hydrogen with it in the mean time?
Because it is very inefficient. You lose 3/4 of the energy in the process
@@didfet5496 With the new electrolysers you lose 25%, not 75%. Production of hydrogen is being looked at for some offshore wind farms. It’s not easy to justify financially because the loss hurts the economics. There’s not much money to be made in renewables unfortunately. Only way to fix the financials is to pay a lot more for power.
@@didfet5496As opposed to losing 100 percent of usable power by doing nothing with it?
75 percent inefficiency sounds good by comparison.
@@John64125I can confirm this. Siemens in particular is looking at offshore hydrogen production.
Search for " ITEG - a closer look" for a nice 3D animation of the pilot test site, also producing hydrogen.
It is difficult to communicate how great a feat this power station is. We've tried harvesting wave and tidal energy in Norway for decades and they've all been crushed by the immense forces at play. Well done UK!
Brilliant 👏
So how much scaleup is realistically possible? 2 MW is not even 1 Wind Turbine. Would love to hear some insights about how many of those could be planted in a specific area and how much costs might decrease over the years. Comparing those costs to Offshore Wind Parks + Storage + Backup Capacity would be what is needed to really get a feeling for the feasibility of these kind of projects.
2:28 This is the great thing about renewables it's a job creator and local economy booster and them we can sell it across the world and make lots of money
Another great massively taxpayer subsidised renewable 'job creator', like with the only post installation jobs being cleaning the solar panels, or changing the oil in wind turbines, or picking up the pieces when a tidal project starts to disintegrate.
@@speedymccreedy8785 Great to see an open mind.
@@speedymccreedy8785 why would they need subsidies, they aren't oil companies. The jobs are in building them, maintenance of most power stations is relatively low compared to the power generated for all forms of energy, in terms of Hydroelectric practically nonexistent, I wouldn't call that a disadvantage, it reduces cost for the consumers. Furthermore why would it disintegrate are you just pretending there is a problem so that you don't have to challenge your views.
So you think oil/gas is not heavily subsidized? The US alone provides 3 billion in direct subsidies, that's not counting tax breaks and military protection of corporate assets overseas. The whole first gulf war was just a giant oil and gas protectionist operation so "friendly" counties controlled the oil fields not Iraq. The less reliance we have on that geopolitically unstable area the better. It might cost more up front, but when the next large scale conflict in an OPEC+ region breaks out, you can shrug because it won't effect your cost of living....
@@Alex-cw3rz so they were making money for the past 15 years despite having no product/energy to sell?
From what I read online, tidal energy is far from a constant 24/7. Like solar it follows a predictable pattern. Seems it produces useful power perhaps 14hrs a day in positive and negative flow pulses throughout the day. Generally two high and two low. But it only produces peak power (the number they advertise) during the pulse maximums. And there is inadequate flow for useful power 10 hrs a day. The power grid requires 24/7 power, not periodic pulses of power. Hence the need for storage. But storage at scale is not a thing yet. IE, tidal is not the answer -- but it can be a dependable part of one. Probably better than solar or wind as it doesn't suffer from unpredictable clouds or calms.
We should have been leading this 20 years ago but am so happy to be proud of this contry, lets lead the way!!
There is a reason why this technology has failed everywhere in the world it has been tried.
@@speedymccreedy8785 lies.
The technology was not about 20yrs ago, efficiency was always the problem.
this unit look cost more than a wind turbine, unless it cheaper and produce more power than a wind turbine
it will be limited to a tech demo product.
this is not new technology
Did you miss the part where they started this nearly 20 years ago?
The issue with tidal power is the maintenance of these systems, they tend to be quite expensive and only last for a few years really
Lot of shite
source: trust me, I listened to the scientists who work for Shell and BP and they said this can't work.
All power generation systems have different maintenance requirements. The marine environment has particular challenges but this is why we need to run prototypes to work out the realities. If the balance of costs, including maintenance, means this isn't worth doing then it won't happen ... investors need to be convinced by evidence. If the engineers and got it right and the numbers work then it will happen.
"This could power a small town for a year"? Surely some mistake, it must be made to last for more than a year. I imagine it could power a small town for at least a few decades if its maintained.
Yup, poor understanding of power vs energy terminology.
i think you miss understood. It will last far longer than a year, they were just saying it could power a small town all year round i think.
@@Littlelamb2023maybe but "for a year" is an odd way to say all year round. I think it does show that the presenter or script writer doesn't really understand the distinction between power and energy.
I have seen a similar concept on the information sticker displayed on new cars for sale here in Canada. It will say the car uses say 8 litres of gasoline per 100 kms or around $3000.00 per year in fuel. This gives the buyer an estimate on the cost of fuel for this car for one year. The customer may decide that is too much to spend on fuel for one year and will look at a car that better suits their fuel budget. For some folks, the yearly cost of fuel is more meaningful than knowing the car uses 8 litres of fuel per 100 kms.
@@fraservalley9027 "For some folks, the yearly cost of fuel is more meaningful"
That would require knowing how many miles or km have been or would be driven. Since the auto manufacturers cannot know this, they can only advise "8 litres of fuel per 100 km" then YOU do the math.
Sensible to explore this, great work.
Many people knocking this in the comments but at the end of the day its a prototype and its great british engineering, we can do this 👍
How on earth could it ever be scaled up.
@@speedymccreedy8785 1. have 100s of these 2. have 4 rotors instead of 2. easy
@@speedymccreedy8785 Build one 2 - 3 times the size for starters.
@@speedymccreedy8785 you really went through all the comments and just openly admit you dont know what your talking about its quite wild how people like yourself think its a good look
National pride over everything 👍
Doesn't matter if it's a good idea. As long as it's great British engineering the people will clap their hands.
I'm glad to see that there is work being done on tidal energy. I live in South Florida and just off our coast is the Gulfstream current. It is a consistent, untapped power source. I've been saying for years that a system that could capture some of that power would be a sure bet.
Bravo. The best story of Britain I have heard in ages.
Dundee's first launch in 40 years! Let it not be the last.
Superb.
02:49 Thunderbirds are go!
I had a friend that was a prof at University of Hawaii trying to build similar wave energy tech. Hawaii has one of the highest cost of energy, they ship in oil. The more these ideas can advance, the better!
This is the most reliable energy on the planet, we should harness it.
But we won't because the most powerful energy giants on the planet will do everything in their power to lobby against it.
Not really. Only works for 2 lots of 6 hours per day and they shift forward around 30 minutes each day. Gas or nuclear works 24 hours at and rate you want it.
@@mrfr87 you know what reliable means, you've literally said it happens every day 🤦♂️ that is reliable as it comes. Also tide doesn't stop or that would mean the moon would stop for 12 hours a day. The only time tide is moving only slowly is for about half an hour at high tide when there is slack tide.
Due to water being 800 times denser than air the times for the tide means that it produces a lot of energy.
In the world of power genertion reliable is 24h a day and with the ability to fluctuate on demand. Electricity is useless/unreliable unless you can generate it exactly when you need it.
Excessive electricity generation when you don’t need causes negative power prices which can make some so green energy uneconomically viable.
Gas and nuclear are miles ahead in terms of reliable electricity. I don’t understand how you couldn’t see otherwise.
@@mrfr87 Gas is only reliable until someone turns the tap off, and our own gas fields start running out. Currently we are importing gas by ship, that's not a reliable source.
There's a big difference between the capabilities of a wind farm, and a tidal generator like this. The wind farm only makes power when the wind is blowing within it's specified range.
Tidal generators such as this are capable of producing their rated output 24/7, good weather, or bad it will keep producing.
The wind turbines main drawback is that it is capable of producing it's rated output only within a narrow range of specific conditions.
Just a photovoltaic panels will only produce their rated output when conditions are just right. And just right conditions only come about a few times a day at best !
This tech is a no-brainer, upgrade the grid and export energy
Reliable energy, except when the flow is reversing.
No no no... You're not supposed to look at that fact, or, at the 100% always ready coal burning power plant that will step in to keep the lights on.
Gearboxes and clutches will be needed of course.
Great stuff, build them on mass, make the UK a green energy super power.
en masse
*en masse.
Not much reason to, we already have plenty of variable renewables.
@@dahamsta QUOTE: En masse comes from French literature, from the phrase "in mass." In this case, mass means "all the people." So, when you do something en masse, everyone does it together. Voting en masse means an entire group of people votes the same way.
If you are building a thing and a lot of them - its on mass.
The conditions where they can be placed are super limited, a great idea for somewhere like the video shows, but nowhere near as applicable on a country-wide scale as wind or solar is
Excellent video. Thank you for sharing.
Amazing stuff. Some of the problems, and why this hasn't been done sooner, weren't mentioned in this short report.
The problem is corrosive power of the sea to the generators, we don't have many things that can withstand long term exposure to sea water. We don't know how they fare long term, the cost of maintenance. the ratio cost to build and maintain is high to the low output (10 of these would only power 20,000 homes). There is no mention of the carbon cost in the supply chain, either.
Not knocking it, but we have to see the full picture.
The answer will come from investment in multiple areas of renewables, including nuclear power.
Solar power has been getting cheaper and cheaper every year, as is wind, and they are less expensive to put up and don't have to deal with seawater corrosion and highly specialized crews.
Nuclear power is very much needed in the mix for the next 120 to 200 years as we transition from fossil fuels, and then we will perfect all these types of pure renewables like tidal, and perhaps even revolutionary energy in fusion power
The UK, as a result of its North Sea oil and gas projects and the Offshore Windfarms, has a depth of experience with marine engineering that is second to none. The corrosion problems can't be overcome indefinitely, but they can certainly be overcome economically. The missing link, as well as grid upgrades, is storage. Tidal power is predicatble, but intermittent and might arrive when demand is low, so cracking the storage conundrum is key.
20.000 homes at the moment paying approx £1700 a year for gas/ele =£34.000.000 got to be worth looking at ..
@@tlangdon12 They can just raise the turbines out of the water when there is over-capacity.
Quite apart from corrosion, the growth of weed / fouling / crustaceans on the blades significantly affects efficiency of underwater turbines. That is the difference between this and other tidal energy projects: the working parts can be easily lifted out of the water for maintenance / cleaning.
@@tlangdon12 Fortunately the storage requirements in respect of tide "changeover" are relatively brief and are well within the capability of existing technology.
All looks great until someone discusses the cost of the grid upgrades and the cables. I'm guessing it's billions and billions at a time when the UK is having to squeeze its belt.
Also, the Swansea tidal turbine has gone nowhere and there's been talk about that for decades.
How is this not more popular ? And to think Reform UK want to stop any new investment in upgrading the Grid 😮.
There is no need to gold plate the grid, this energy source is not more 'popular' because it has never worked at scale anywhere in the world.
Because in the grand scheme of things this is useless for powering the UK. Might be okay for a tiny island with 2000 houses though.
@@speedymccreedy8785The change in the grid needed for Orkney is "simply" a bigger connector/cable to meet the supply that windy isle can produce. For the rest of the grid the change needs is because coal power stations were in the middle of the country and gas, nuclear etc are on the coast
Reform UK are climate-change-denying idiots. Best ignored on any subject like this.
That's pretty rad. I hope it works well for you. And please hurry up.
"There's a familiar chorus of criticism when it comes to renewable energy - what happens if the sun doesn't shine or the wind is calm?"
You can supplement with hydro or less-clean energy. You don't have to replace all coal/NG power generation, you only need to reduce it. The ol' "what happens when .." argument is the equivalent of "I can't use it 100%, so why bother trying?" level of reasoning.
The issue is renewable proponents constantly speak of replacing and not supplementing.
That's why we look to pump the brakes on the utter insanity with real questions like "What happens when?"
Stop your rhetoric.
Strangford Lough Tidal Turbine located in Northern Ireland, UK, was the world’s first commercial-scale tidal energy project. It was commissioned in July 2008 by a subsidiary of British tidal energy company Siemens, Marine Current Turbines (MCT). The 1.2MW project uses MCT’s SeaGen turbine technology and required a total investment of £12m ($23.8m).
The project involved installation of two 600kW turbines, which was completed in June 2008 and produced 150kW of electricity to the grid in July 2008. SeaGen generated electricity at its maximum capacity of 1.2MW for the first time in December 2008.
Already paid for itself then....
And they got bought by Altantis and some turbines installed in the Irish Sea. But seabed turbines are really hard to service and cost much more than this Orbital design (£350/MWh). I don;t think they are going to get many more design wins
So it's very expensive, doesn't produce that much energy (as a prototype), is very circumstantial to build, doesn't work with our existing electrical grid, and due to the natural corrosion of the sea will require huge amounts of constant maintenance. I'm not seeing this as a golden ticket to sustainability outside of very specific applications, but there are simply better bang for buck options out there as much as one can respect the efforts of the company. It is a hard sell.
I worked on a oil platform in the Cook Inlet which has similar tides. The movement of tides left a similar wake when flowing. If the turbine can stand up to the harsh reality of salt water this will be amazing.
Good luck 🇬🇧👍
What may work is a "pillars of the sea" type solution. Have lined up pillars some 40m apart and lower a grid of modular turbines into the water on toothed guide rails at the side of the pillars. On stormy days bring them up to a safe height e.g. 100ft/ 30m.
Why does he say 'power 2000 homes for a year'? It does it every year. It powers 2000 homes. It's basic physics.
This will be a hoot seeing them try to scale this up, there aren't enough taxpayer subsidies in the world for that.
2000 homes a year, they get more electricity out of Fred Flintstones pedal car running down a step hill.
Yes, the usual blurring of power versus energy. In truth, it would be "Meets the energy needs of 2000 homes."
Journalists rarely understand that energy = power * time
Why can't they just give us the MW output over the day when the tides turn and show us a graph so we can see how that power moves with the state of the tide.
@@TimMountjoy-zy2fd yeah, that is interesting, if the turning of the tide coincides with peak energy use, this entire project is kinda useless.
"Unlike solar and wind, tidal power never stops." In other words, THIS technology should be developed and deployed as far and wide as it can go!
Except when it's at slack water, you know when it's at either high or low tide then there's zero output. I'd hate to rely on that for say your oxygen generator! "Hey Bill, the generator is going down again be prepared to hold your breath for 20 to 60 minutes sorry about that"!
So the grid(interconnector) can not handle energy produced from Wage generation... get rid of an old power station and plug it into it`s interconnector
Love this company!!! Really want to see them scale worldwide!
Beyond human comprehension?? We designed, manufactured and built it. More top-notch journalism 😵.
You mean you don't know a con when it is staring you in the face?
He's talking about the power of the oceans. Although you could measure the current flows and estimate the volume and mass of water flowing through there to get an approximation of the power available just in that channel.
What he really means is that it's beyond _his_ human comprehension. I can only imagine what he would think of a nuclear plant that produces over a thousand times as much power as this thing. It would blow his tiny mind. 🤣
@@WJS774 🤣🤣
2 MegaWatts is indeed far from human comprehension. It is the power of about 30 or 40 modern car engines running at full tilt. Watch a motorway for a minute and you comprehend it. A drop in the ocean, no pun intended.
The big unanswered question is reliability. The North Sea is a very harsh environment. Will these keep working relatively maintenance free for 20 years like wind and solar? The cost per mega watt hour is high, but predictability of generation is a big advantage.
yes, who's gonna go down there and scrape off the barnacles from the hull and blades every couple of months?
@@nirodper it's moored - barnacles on the hull are not a problem. The blades lift out of the water for maintenance. It's been working since 2021 so they appear to have the cleaning under control.
Smart!
Timeless engineering, a marvel of technology 👏👏👏
Timeless, until the huge government taxpayer funded subsidies run out.
This tech at 2MW could power around 650 homes while we continue wanting our dinner at 8 in individual homes. But i like how this is "rounded' to 2000 and then to a small town (10,000ish). 😂. For this we'd need a few more and some (preferably local) battery systems (physical or chemical) that could buffer the power mismatch.
why do news station always add 'for a year' when they describe approximately how much power is bring generated? what happens after a year?
The reporter is an idiot. The interviewee even corrected him at first but the reporter was oblivious and said it wrong again.
Because they are complete morons who don't understand a thing of what they are reporting on. So much the same as all their _other_ reporting, really.
In British English, 'for a year' would be taken as meaning 'per year' (or 'each year') in this case. Also for the average person it gives a point of reference and understanding that it's not power generated in a given instant but energy used over a time period.
@@GruffSillyGoat No it wouldn't. Only an idiotic journalist would take it to mean that.
@@GruffSillyGoat 'per year' would make just as little sense. Power can not be generated instantly per definition
When I was a kid around the mid-80s, I had a book showing the concept of a tidal turbine saying, "maybe one day we can do this". And now it's become reality. What a time to be alive!
G'day,
Looks great.
There might not be too many places which are as "ideal" as the spot shown though, Globally....
And, as with ALL Tidal Power Systems,
Corrosion and Storm-induced
Structural Overloads and
Fatigue-Failure
Will prove
Difficult to
Engineer around,
Within the limits of
Commercial profitability.
Typically, the Prototypes fail relatively quickly, then the next attempt lasts longer, and when a Weather Event, or Algal Bloom, destroys the third iteration - that's when the Investors go looking for something
Less expensive to de-bug &
Perfect...
In my observation.
Such is life,
Have a good one...
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
What a quirky comment
@@PrinceRules64
G'day,
Thanks !
One does admit to being a bit of an
Oddball..., I do pay the Rates on the hundred-acre Endangered Species Sanctuary within which I reside, off-grid ; I've been out here for 33 of my 63 years, and a Goal is to be able to pass as being a competent Smartarse (because it's the incompetent Smartarses who are the intolerable ones...?).
23 Playlists, 5.5k Sub's, 2.11 million Views, 3.4k Uploads...; No Computer, this never-monetised Channel runs on a Prepaid Mobile Phone.
No Post-production Editing.
Shoot-In-Sequence to
Edit-In-Camera.
Audio recorded in Realtime
While the Shutter rolls.
Seven Playlists of Wildlife Encounters, sorted by Species.
Where I come from,
I'm literally
The Fool On The Hill...,
Someone has to do it ;
And my Doorstep is literally
Vertically-superior to
Every Rooftop around, for
15 Km in all directions (!).
My YT Channel is my only Internet presence.
Please feel free to
Backtrack me,
To
Fact-check moi.
(lol).
Such is life,
Have a good one...
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
During that ebb you don't get power (so it's not endless), so your power grid will still need a base load power plant (coal, oil, nuclear).
Its roomier than i thought was pure Partridge 😂
It's got a nice action.
A lot of comments (justifiably) confused by the 2,000 homes statistics. It wasn't expressed clearly.
To clarify, 2MW is only enough for 1,000 kettles instantaneously, so this does seem daft. However, the grid has the capacity to store excess energy for times of greater demand. Hence, if the tide generates more energy during off-peak hours, it will be stored.
This process is not 100% efficient, otherwise the turbine would power many more than 1,000 homes. :)
Dear Brits, please push this! We need more nations, developing smart and advanced technologies to harvest energy from clean sources without any impact on the nature.
If the built two dozen of the these plants in that channel there would definitely be an impact on nature. Just like the wind farms kill thousands birds every year these would undoubtedly kill many forms of aquatic life every year. We should not expect energy production to be 100 percent safe for wildlife however we should make attempts to minimize wildlife losses with every cost effective means possible. This requires science to discover effective low cost solutions to discourage the wildlife from entering hazardous areas. I do not think wind / solar / wave energy can fully replace the capacity of fossil fuels but we do need to integrate these solutions into the power grid. I truly believe that small modular nuclear power plants are the most logical short term solution to replacing fossil fuels. Having certified mass produced small power plant designs allows for maximizing public safety while minimizing production cost's and we need to push our governments to evaluate and approve the safe designs and allow them to be built. The other technology that needs continual research is in the field of cost effective energy storage solutions. Energy storage is the key to maximizing the effective use of renewable energy solutions only by capturing excess energy when it is available and using it when it is not available can we make the most use of these technologies.
you think this doesnt impact nature? So I have a bridge in Maryland to sell you, its slightly used, may have some structural damage but is still a bridge...
I have read about this about ten years ago as a child, very nice to see it becoming reality ❤️😍
You must be a youngster. I knew someone who was working on tidal energy prototypes 40 years ago, and he wasn't the first!
"Unlike solar and unlike wind, the tides never stop" Yes they do. I believe twice a day.
Just over 6 hours per tidal cycle, so they stop 4 times a day. The max output would be for approx 2 hrs mid tidal cycle, so quoted max output would be approx 8 hrs a day tapering to zero on slack water for approx 4 hrs per day. Somehow don’t think the whole story is being told here, if it’s so good why hasn’t it been done already?
oh wow you're right, we should ignore that power source and never find any useful application for the gigawatts clean free energy it does produce for 12 hours out of every 24.
@@optimist3580 The Strangford one supposedly added 150kW to the grid from 1.2MW turbines.. so about 12% output relative to theoretical max, due to all the slack water. Nevermind the maintenance. The key words in this report were 'investment vehicle'.. prepare to get rug-pulled if you put cash anywhere near these.
And yet we will see absolutely no change in energy bills
Oh but we do see a change in energy bills. We saw them spike spectacularly when gas supplies were affected by the Russia/Ukraine situation or by oil prices set by OPEC or by war in middle east. Nowadays in the UK you can buy your electricity on a flexible tariff and save money by using it mostly when electricity is cheap. There are even some days when there is so much renewable generation that electricity is free ... or a small payment is made to you as a consumer for each kWh you consume!
Like all power generated from natural phenomena, it produces energy according to it’s own timetable
Hang on now.... 2 mega watts for 2000 homes is only 1kW per house. That is VERY little for a developed country. Maybe this will power 400 homes at best.
It'll likely be based on an average 24hr period. My base load is usually only 200-300 watts for fridge, freezer, lights, computer, and then peaking to 2-3kw to run the oven or the kettle, but then dipping lower at night. On average it is well under 1kw. Using electricity for water and space heating will skew this higher, but on an average population over 24 hours, 1kw is probably reasonable.
OK professor doctor that guy chris. Gee I bet the engineers who designed and built the thing sure are glad you read on facebook that tidal energy don't make enough completely free power to be of any use to anyone for anything, especially not based on your probably very accurate guesstimates on power consumption.
@djotter I live in a single level 1200 Sq ft home with all electric appliances. During the summer months, I can hit 2000kWh for the month, so averaging over 66kWh per day. This equates to just under 3kW per hour, way over the 1kW per house they plan on providing from this generator. Now if ALL my appliances and heat came from gas, and my AC was alternative, then it's very possible to use so little.
@@thatguychris5654 Are you in the US? 66kWh/day is a _lot_ by UK standards. Even a heat pump+EV household with teenagers in the UK is more like 35kWh/day.
@@thatguychris5654 Average UK household electricity is 2700kWh or 300W averaged over the year. Most people heat with gas (11,500kWh) and nobody has AC. Electricity is expensive ($0.3/kwh) and homes are small
Tidal power is the future. Great British Energy should be investing heavily.
US citizen here: Wow. Totally amazing! Bo Brits!!
Good concept, now make it low maintenance with no moving parts that touch
This was on the fully charged channel 6 years ago under EMEC Tidal Power. Bit late to the party hey Channel 4.
Aye, that was several prototypes ago also.
@@krashd 1 prototype ago. Fully charged did the original machine. This is the much bigger 2nd gen machine.
Finally ! Common let’s make this happen and scale
You know when the writer journalist don't know what they are talking about when they point the number of houses this can power 'per year'.
Are there any long term studies on what effect tidal turbines have on sea life and sea habitat?
"There's a familiar chorus of criticism when it comes to renewable energy - what happens if the sun doesn't shine or the wind is calm?
But that certainly isn't the case when it comes to tides, which always ebb and flow."
Just like the sun stops shining at night, the water stops moving at the high and low tides, known as slack water.
The total amount of solar irradiance per day is equivalent to around 7 hours of peak sunshine, the total amount of water movement (velocity rms) is around 66% of the peak tidal flow.
Shush, you'll confuse the poor journalist with those facts. He can't even comprehend how much 2MW is.
@@WJS774 “two megawatts or slightly less peak power than one modern wind turbine” wouldn’t have sold as well 😅
When I worked offshore, I would observe a 500-ton standby ship being lifted up and down several feet even on a calm day, imagine how much electrical / Hydraulic power you would need to simulate that same motion of that ship in a dry dock. so how about a huge flywheel ( scale the size up to whatever is possible) connected to the seabed the up and down motion of the waves on the ship / giant barge spins the flywheel coupled to a generator forever.
2 megawatts is FA. Thats what a small windturbine has these days.
Every day there’s wind. This is just a small prototype.
@@kenmurray4005 ??? yeah?!
It really is fa
It’s a prototype!
The wind doesn't blow continuously...
Cool. With just 13,499 more, we could power every home in Britain. Until the gas gets cut off and everyone needs to heat their homes and cook with electricity, and charge their cars, that is. Will need a few more thousand to power the factories, hospitals, office blocks, prisons, schools etc etc. Should keep somebody busy for awhile
Thank you Scotland for 💰 🤑
Westminster
You think the Tories funded this 😂
EU Horizon Europe fund
In November 2023, Nova Innovation won €20 million in funding from the EU Horizon Europe fund to install a 16-turbine tidal energy farm in Orkney. The project, called SEASTAR, will be the world's largest tidal turbine farm and will build on the success of Nova's Shetland Tidal Array, the first offshore tidal array in the world.
Abundance Investment
In 2019, Abundance Investment provided £7 million in funding to Orbital Marine Power to help construct the O2 turbine, the world's most powerful tidal turbine. The O2 turbine launched in 2021 and has been operational since July of that year. It's expected to generate enough electricity to power 1,700 UK homes and offset around 2,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Londoner here, love you Scotland!
@@julianshepherd2038 did I say the Tories funded this?
I suspect England will benefit more from Scottish resources..
@@Turtytreeandaturd Ah yeah England is going to steal all of Scotland's wave power ay? Never mind we're British that was unified under a *Scottish* king. You speak divisive nonsense, likely for some dictator as the enemy of all British.
@@julianshepherd2038 How on Earth did you get the idea the Tories are Scottish?
Retired Mech Eng here. Very interesting and necessary technology. 👏
Hi.
Hmmm. This is a nice idea, but I see one big problem. If they need a "big grid upgrade" then this is actually a "big taxpayer subsidy" in disguise. If this were a genuine commercial project then they would be generating enough revenue to build their own supply network. No need to wait guys, just crack on and get it built with your own money.
Generating electricity in some remote location is all well and fine, but if the costs to get that to the consumer is too high then it makes no sense. 10x of these would generate 20MW, by comparison Sizewell B is 1198MW and C will be 3260MW. Combined, this is 223x bigger and is producing power on the doorstep of SE England on a 100% duty cycle, 24 hours a day.
Technically, good job 🙂
Commercially not so good I think 😞
Brian.
😂build their own energy grid? No power company does that. They all use the grid. Jeez
@@krzysztofjan4214 Thanks for the reply. Just to be 100% clear since my statement was a bit ambiguous - I didn't mean the whole grid, just a connection to it of course.
Shall we have a little dig into the costs?
The Eday tidal generator cost £10M, and they want to have 10, so that's £100M for the machines. Eday to the mainland is 30 miles by sea, and at the very low end it's £2M per mile for a sub-sea cable. So the install cost is at least £60M, (possibly 5x - 10x more depending on the cable needed and the sea bed conditions.) Also to note - maybe the connection from John O' Groats to civilization also needs an upgrade, but they can have that for free on me.
So at the bottom end we are looking at £160M to generate 20MW, making £8 per Watt. The video doesn't mention it, but I will bet you my lunch this 2MW is the peak output not the average (divide by sqrt(2) to convert if you fancy it)
Now look at Sizewell B. Build cost £2.5B and it produces 1198MW, making it £2.10 per Watt.
So if we did this for the whole UK, your electricity bill would be about 4x bigger. Fancy that? I thought not.
But the national grid just isn't interested. They can do the same maths as me. The costs just don't make sense.
All the best,
Brian.
Hi Brian, we’re going to need to upgrade the grid no matter what because we cannot reach net zero without offshore wind, which is already having similar issues. These industries have very small margins for obvious reasons (competition + the imperative of keeping customer costs low). Offshore wind is extremely cheap and we’re growing our capacity rapidly.
The necessary grid connections are not just about getting electricity to the Scottish mainland, or from John O’Groats to Inverness, or even from Inverness to the central belt. Scotland is going to produce more energy than it can use and needs to export that to England, but the grid does not have capacity. And even then, we need upgrades basically everywhere as the grid has not received sufficient investment for decades and we need to electrify transport and heating (and probably much of heavy industry).
You are quite right that nuclear has several advantages over offshore renewables: total reliability, some limited dispatchabllity, generally shorter transmission distances. It also has huge capital costs, high electricity costs (compared to wind and solar, admittedly not tidal), skills shortages, and extremely long delivery times. Hinkley Point C is currently estimating 12-14 years between construction starting and completion, and over twenty once you factor in all the pre-construction negotiations and approvals. I personally think Hinkley C and Sizewell C will play an important role in our energy system, but we won’t see Wylfa B (which of course is also in a remote location) or new plants at Oldbury or Bradwell before 2045 at best, by which time we’ll have basically decarbonised the grid plus land transport plus domestic heating. Unfortunately those 30 years we lost between construction starting in Sizewell B and construction starting on Hinkley Point C have severely handicapped our nuclear capacity.
@@tomwantshelp Hi Tom,
thanks for the info, I have to agree with you that our nuclear programme has been a real mess. In essence our politicians just don't think much beyond the next few years, so the decisions just get put off and off. If we really want to hit net zero and still be able to afford to run your fridge, then nuclear is about all we have.
I do wonder though, we talk about net zero but China and India keep building more coal power stations, and just don't care. If we shut down UK PLC tomorrow and sank beneath the waves, it would make pretty much zero difference to the global CO2 levels. COP xyz with their "transformational agreements" come and go but the C02 measurements at Mauna Loa don't show any change. Our net zero seems nothing more than kicking ourselves in the groin to me.
Ah well.
Brian
Unfortunately it's a tiny amount of energy. 2MW is nothing. A single modern wind turbine is around 10MW. Even the proposed 20MW from 10 tidal machines is the equivalent of 2 wind turbines. It just won't be a priority for grid upgrade because it's too small. Priority projects will be orders of magnitude bigger.
"2MW, enough for 2000 houses for a year". What a bunch of bull! 2MW for 2000 houses is 1000 w for each house- that's enough for each house to have a toaster on, and nothing else. Try to run your hour house on 1000w.
"For a year"- that makes no sense. If the generator can power houses, than it can power them for as long as its running, not "for a year".
"Tide never stops" - also insane thing to say. Have they never been to the ocean? It stops every 6 hours!!
This reporter is not too bright, but I bet he's got the climate figured out.
You're right that this is woefully underwhelming compared to nuclear power or even legacy fossil fuels, but the power that houses use is actually less than that, since your toaster isn't on 24/7. The average house uses about 3,000 kWh of electricity each year, which works out to an average of less than 350W - though obviously peaks a _lot_ higher for short periods like when you boil the kettle.
@@WJS774 The nuclear power station has an implied insurance contract with the government and the owner of the nuclear plant pays nothing for that insurance. If they went onto the private market to get an insurance contract to cover the cost of a possible Fukushima/Chernobyl event, the cost would be horrific. The nuclear power station is way MORE expensive.
2:15 I'm sure I can't be the only one to mention this, but "the tides never stop", is true, but they only run fast for about 6 hours twice daily. When the tide is turning, there is no flow, so no power generation.
Oh no, it's ok. They have a coal burning power plant burning coal at full power all the time for when the tides slowly turn and slowly turns strong enough again. Problem solved. 😏
2 megawatts? R.E. Ginna puts out 582 megawatts. So if they can find enough good tidal flow areas to put up 296 of these things, they will match the smallest nuclear power plant in the US.
Now the question is which one would be more expensive?
Probably a neck and neck race.
@@Jehty_ not if you ask a supplemental question - what does each cost in fuel to produce 1mW? Remembering of course that uranium doesn't just flow past the power station naturally, you have to use fossil fuel powered vehicles and machines to extract the raw material, refine it and transport the refined fuels to the reactors. And that fuel has to be extracted, refined and transported too. Very quickly tidal becomes orders of magnitude more efficient than anything else. If you're being honest about it, that is.
Then there's a bigger question, which one would you rather live close to? (hint. ask the surviving former residents of Chernobyl.)
@@Jehty_ Never, also factor in decomissioning these systems after their duty cycle and this is where atomic energy loses. Tidal Power will not create junk that stays toxic to everything living vor 10 thousand years or more
My point was that they need to scale this up hundreds of times just to match the SMALLEST nuclear plant in the US. Then they would need thousands more to match the others. And those nuke plants only supply 20 percent of US power generation. And these turbines could never match a nuclear generator in longevity. There are a lot of people in the comments acting like this solves some sort of problem created by energy use. What this might do, maybe, is partially solve a problem caused by using "green" energy, in certain specific places.
We require a mix of renewables here in the UK and across the world. We don't need (or want) all our eggs in one basket. We already have more power produced from renewables in the UK than from fossil fuels even without tidal power ... but let's add this into the mix if it has proved economic to do so. I'll give you some real-time electricity generation figures for the UK today as I type this at 12pm: The fossil fuel proportion of today's generation is entirely from gas and is presently making up just 7% of the total. 30% is from wind and 21% is from solar, 18% from nuclear and the rest is from biomass and from imports. In my own location in the UK today we have 96% "zero carbon" generation. I suggest you start lobbying your state and your national government to make some similar progress. Spend less of your own energy on delaying essential change and put more into making energy transition happen!
Full honesty.
This is straight up cool
Outstanding 👍
Birds in the sky, whales in the sea😂 Are the fish ok with this?😅
I remember the Cardiff bay electricity generating promises many years ago, they were talking about generating 3000 MW (3 times the amount of electricity that a nuclear power-plant generates!)! What happened after billions of pounds was wasted on that silly project?
While Orbitals 2MW weights about 700 metric ton, Minesto operating in Faroe Islands and soon Holyhead have a tidal turbine of 1m2MW at 28 ton, that also works in much slower currents (more available locations) than the =2 needs.
It would be right out criminal to our nature to waste ~350 tons of steel per MW when we can do it with only 23.
Upgrade the grid. No reason it can't be done. The damage caused by fossil fuels and climate change costs far more.
I was surprised that the new HVDC connectors in that part of the world didn't get a mention ... there is also a huge windfarm (Viking) which is now coming on stream from Shetland which will be sending power to the south. The distribution and access to/from the grid requires to be upgraded in various locations but it is wrong to assume that our grid capacity overall needs to immediately increase ... it comes as a surprise to many people to learn that our UK generation and consumption is less in 2024 than it was in 2005 ... we've actually got capacity!
It doesn't need the grid to handle it. More focus needs to be given to modular and localised energy supply. Generators like this don't need a single centre of generation, such as a power station. Thousands could be dotted around our coastline where power is needed.
Anyone else underwhelmed by "2000 homes" ?
The trade offs don't seem worth it
Renewable energy (excluding hydro) is about volume of turbines rather than the size of each individual turbine.
We’re going to need to upgrade our grid no matter what.
It’s more expensive than wind and solar but likely to come down in price as more is deployed.
Am I missing any other downsides?
Looking at the energy this produces 2000 homes was extremely optimistic as well.. Realistically it would power around 200-400 and if those home owners have electric cars then it’s powering a fraction of that again.
When Stephenson built the rocket did people stop and say na it only carries 2 people give up. No they thought the whole world could use this on a grand scale.
They should have heaters onboard to melt down plastic when they have excess energy being produced. Could even turn them into factories for commonly used items assuming theres very minimal carbon output
No such thing as too much energy .. store it, convert it .. predictable green power on a massive scale is brilliant! 😁