It’s sad to see that run-of-river hydro hasn’t taken off, since it’s such an elegant way to extract the kinetic energy from moving water; such an approach has very little impact to aquatic life, and raises few other environmental concerns.
Category: Hydrokinetics
2GreenEnergy: Keeping It Honest and Straight
To clarify matters, I thought I’d respond to two recent comments from attack-dog MarcoPolo, who writes: It would be more honest if would admit your pecuniary relationship with the technologies you write about. and
Concept in Wave Energy
I just received a note from a reader, asking me to check out his concept in wave energy. As a prelude, he offered the video below, which examines the validity of the overall concept of extracting energy from the motion …
Tagged with: wave energy
Waterlily Turbine Charges the Cellphones of the True Morons Out There
I don’t think I know anyone stupid enough to pay $160 for a device that requires a gushing stream or a stiff, steady breeze (and the time to position it properly) to do the job performed by a $25 piece …
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Concept in Ocean Wave Energy
Here’s a video depicting one of variations on the theme of extracting energy from ocean waves. Though I’ve seen countless numbers, I haven’t studied each of the variants thoroughly, so it’s only a guess when I say that this seems …
Renewable Energy Comes to Nepal–But It’s Not the Variety You’d Imagine
We’ve all had the experience of reading something from a reliable source and wondering how it could possibly be true. Here’s an article from the Asian Development Bank that heralds the electrification of a village in Nepal with wind and solar.
Tagged with: Renewable Energy Comes to Nepal
If Hydrokinetics Is Going To Work, It Won’t Look Like This
Like wind turbines, devices intended to extract kinetic energy out of moving water are limited in their generation capacity by their “swept area,” i.e. the area of the imaginary circle made by tips of the blades.
Cost-Effective Renewable Energy Means Device Optimization
Pictured here is a device that combines wind and hydrokinetic energy. Its proponents make the case that there is a strong overlap between the regulations that govern offshore wind and tidal/ocean current energy (which I’m sure is correct) and that …
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From Guest Blogger Emily Folk: What’s the Potential for Hydroelectric Power?
Hydroelectric power is one of the oldest forms of electricity production and the largest renewable energy source in use today. Hydro currently makes up approximately 21 percent of global energy production. Hydroelectric power reached 1,064 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity …
From Guest Blogger Emily Folk: What’s the Potential for Hydroelectric Power? Read More »
Tidal Energy Today: Oregon’s Waves Could Create 1,000 Jobs per 1GW of Deployment
I had to laugh when I saw the headline above. If your criterion for a good energy policy is jobs/Watt, get everyone in America riding grid-connected stationary bicycles, eight hours per day.
