Several companies make suitable cable to bring the power back to shore. Here is some info I stole from www.kerite.com:
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Posted on 12/12/2003 1:33:36 PM PST by Dog Gone
MIAMI -- Herb Williams, a Palatka, Fla., dock builder and former Alaskan crab boat skipper, isn't the first guy you would peg for solving the world's energy problems.
But here he sat, tropical shirt standing out at a table of button-down engineers from Miami-Dade's water and sewer plant on Virginia Key, making a plan that sounds like science fiction seem plausible. Almost inevitable.
Williams' small company wants to sink a network of innovative turbines he has designed -- think of a giant fan with a hole in the center where the hub should be -- deep into the Gulf Stream off the coast of South Florida.
If it works -- still a big question -- the machines would convert the relentless flow of that undersea river into a more valuable kind of current.
Electricity.
Enough power, Williams predicts, from one turbine to keep much of the sewage plant churning or 1,000 homes humming. Enough juice from about 500 huge machines Williams envisions eventually anchored offshore to light half the state. Clean, inexhaustible and, most important, cheap power.
"We all want to clean up the environment, but we haven't come up with one thing that is cost-efficient," Williams said. "We've got something that can beat fossil fuel."
The engineers listened with interest but remained skeptical, as have big investors and utilities. After all, Williams' biggest feat to date came two years ago when a small 10-foot prototype lighted up a sign off Palm Beach County spelling out the company name, Florida Hydro.
But it did glow on pure Gulf Stream current.
And that makes Williams' work intriguing, particularly when it's coupled with growing concerns about oil shortages and recent advances by other companies developing ocean energy projects.
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In July, a British company installed the first large offshore turbine off the coast of England, a prototype intended to create power from tidal current flows. Other European and American companies are developing systems to tap tides, waves and currents.
Lots of technical challenges remain but the potential of ocean energy, considered dim for decades, has brightened.
Two years ago, Florida Power & Light told the Palm Beach Post that technology like Williams' was "nonviable." Now, an FPL spokeswoman, Pat Davis, says, "It's definitely something we are watching."
Williams also has drawn interest from the Navy. He hopes to sign a contract with the Navy's South Florida Testing Facility in Port Everglades to help construct a full-scale prototype, with blades 106 feet in diameter, for testing off the coast.
The idea of tapping ocean currents or tides has been around for decades and in principle is not much different than a dam capturing a river's energy or a windmill converting breeze into power. And as a potential source of renewable energy, the Gulf Stream is particularly attractive. It flows near shore, as close as three miles, around the clock at an average of 3 1/2 knots.
But the mechanical challenges are immense. Gear would have to endure rust, fouling from marine growth, nasty weather. Any service crews would need deep-sea dive gear. There are huge questions of cost and reliability.
"The ocean environment is incredibly harsh. Getting something to function for a long period of time is incredibly difficult," said Bill Johns, a professor of oceanography at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "You can make it work in a bathtub, but will it work in the ocean?"
Williams believes his turbines will work, practically and financially.
He has already earned several patents for the design, which grew out of his lifelong interest in the ocean and an innate talent for tinkering. Williams, son of a Lake Okeechobee, Fla., fisherman, said he became fascinated with ocean power 10 years ago while working for energy companies as a boat captain in Alaska, where tides rise and fall about 30 feet a day.
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But to tap that power with a traditional turbine would require a massive and heavy machine -- too expensive and inefficient. He pondered the problem for years.
"One day I was looking at this propeller and thought, `Boy, all this energy is coming from the tips.' "
His bright idea became a fan with a hole in the middle, whirring blades aligned by magnets and other mechanisms.
It worked small-scale. But will it hold up under the stress of larger blades? Will it work under tough conditions consistently enough for power grids that demand reliability?
Williams believes it can, eventually. To reduce barnacles and other growth, he plans to use mostly plastic and fiberglass with a design that will allow turbines to be easily removed for servicing. Floating about 200 feet below the surface and anchored to the sea floor, they would also be sheltered from storms above.
· · ·
Though he has yet to build a full-scale model, earlier this year Williams applied for the first federal permit for what he envisions as seven "energy fields" stretching from Miami to Vero Beach, Fla., with an array of 500 generators. The review could take a year.
"There are just so many questions," said John Stoot, chief of the South permits branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "This is an absolutely new technology."
Would the turbines harm turtles or fish? Would cables or anchors affect reefs? What about effects on ocean currents?
Williams has little worry about such impacts. The big blades are blunt, not sharp, and turn at just two revolutions a minute, he said, too slow to harm any creatures.
The more important test is to compare ocean energy to coal, oil or nuclear energy, he said.
"This is renewable, clean energy, environmentally sound stuff," he said.
And don't forget cheap. Williams claims he could produce juice for a penny a kilowatt, which he says is about half of FPL's cost.
Sounds great. If -- that question again -- it works.
So far, despite lots of talks with investors and cities, nobody has banked much on it. Williams figures he has sunk a half-million of his own and friends' money into the venture but needs about $2 million more to build the bigger prototype.
John Chorlog, an assistant director for Miami-Dade's Water and Sewer Department, said Williams would have to supply more details, along with working models and hard, verifiable results, before the county would sign on to bankroll a project or hook Florida's Virginia Key sewer plant to sunken turbines. Besides, the plant already burns one reliable renewable energy source -- methane gas produced by waste.
"Our position is we're always willing to listen but we're very conservative," he said. "It sounds very interesting but you've got to show me. We're not going to buy a pig in the poke."
Williams is used to that kind of skepticism but remains optimistic. It may take 10 or 20 years, but he's convinced sea power is in Florida's future.
"I don't have a lot of formal education as an engineer or scientist. I lose a lot of credibility on that," he said. "Another problem is the whole idea that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. To think out of our little box is really hard."
Don't forget transmission of the electricity to shore. Using my newly acquired Professional Engineer's certificate :^D, I concur and declare that the project is not viable with current technology.
And the best part is.....Free Sushi!!!
blades 106 feet underwater, we know that tiny little fish and whales will be endangered by this idea. then we will have kennedy wondering if these will ruin his view from his palm beach sex stop.
Please don't presume that...
It makes NO sense to presume that. It's like saying extracting solar power would cause Global Cooling. Or wind farms would disrupt wind patterns. It doesn't work that way...
Damming a river "disrupts" it's normal patterns, but you could get all the energy the world needs from the ocean without disrupting it's patterns.
A plus all-in-all compared to the current Global Warming batch session.
These will only chop up fish and submarines.
Several companies make suitable cable to bring the power back to shore. Here is some info I stole from www.kerite.com:
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Mmmmmmm... manatee 'burgers.... yummy!
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