Tidal Energy
In my quest to learn Spanish, I try to read articles on renewable energy in that language. Here we have:
La empresa líder mundial en energía mareomotriz, Nova Innovation, ha completado con éxito su proyecto de fabricar su turbina mareomotriz de accionamiento directo de última generación, lista para el mercado.
La nueva turbina, que elimina la necesidad de una caja de engranajes, reduce el costo de la energía mareomotriz en un 30 por ciento y está destinada a revolucionar la industria mareomotriz.
“Estamos muy contentos de ver el excelente progreso que la industria de la energía mareomotriz ha hecho en los últimos años, con proyectos como el D2T2 de Nova Innovation que han ayudado a esto reduciendo significativamente los costos asociados a la industria”.
…which translates as follows:
(caption in photo): Nova Innovation successfully builds a new tidal turbine
The world leader in tidal energy, Nova Innovation, has successfully completed its project to build its next generation direct drive tidal turbine, now market-ready. The turbine, which eliminates the necessity of a gear box, reduces the cost of tidal energy by 30% and is destined to revolutionize the tidal energy industry.
“We are very happy to see the progress that the tidal energy industry has made in recent years, with projects like Nova Innovation’s D2T2 which has helped in this cost reduction in the industry.”
My comments:
Direct drive is a huge trend in the wind industry, which is closely related for obvious reasons. Not too long ago, direct drive required huge, heavy, and expensive generators, though this is less the case today. For that reason, I have every reason to believe that these guys have shaved 30% of the cost of tidal energy.
The problem is that the remaining 70% is that fraction of a huge number, which is still a huge number. While extracting and converting the kinetic energy out of ocean currents looked like a possibility in terms of cost-effectiveness as recently as five years ago, the plummeting cost of wind and solar has put a spear through that, and thus there is no industry left here to revolutionize. This is the case regardless of which language one chooses to explain the situation.
