Posted on 04/24/2006 1:48:35 PM PDT by mission9
Now that oil is 75 dollars a barrel, and it costs fifty bucks to fuel the SUV, what about tapping the gulf stream for inexhaustable power? This nation's energy needs are growing, and national security demands that we free the electricity producers from the oil economy. Florida has ALL the free new energy it needs in the form of the Gulf Stream. This moving current of water is one thousand feet deep, twenty miles wide and three miles off Broward County. A moving current of water is 832 times more energy dense than wind. There is many times more energy in the Gulf Stream than there is found Colorado River when harvested by the Hoover Dam. Additional research is not needed; pilot programs have been tested and are viable. The state should establish a contract for an offshore energy development area then lease the zones at favorable rates. The income from the leases and electricity will help balance the national debt. The harvesting of tropical ocean heat could potentially help to reduce global warming and the intensity of hurricanes. Check out the link.
RRRRIGHT. AND all the windmills in Calif are causing the droughts in the midwest too. Silting of turbine blades probably the biggest problem - as in Bay of Fundy.
I remember seeing something about this in popular mechanics 20+ years ago. Something about using the temperature differential at varying depths to drive electric turbines.
Your speculation of opposition from luddites is credible, so are you saying that you oppose the project because somebody else somewhere might oppose the project too? You are making "Chicken Little" look brave. Next, I'll hear that the project is not viable because of its location in the "Bermuda Triangle."
"It will kill the fishies caught up in the turbines." /sarc/
I see a two-fold benefit here. Harvest the energy and the poor dead fish to feed the crews working on the rigs. Or build a floating cannery next to the rigs, can the fish and send them to welfare recipents instead of handing out foodstamps that they use to buy Twinkies and Soda with.
Problem solved.
WOW!!!
I've heard vague references to this kind of technology for several years, but I had no idea that a proven design existed. This looks like it is worthy project.
At one time wind turbines were scoffed as being impractical, but there are thousands of them all over the place, and they are putting a lot of power into the grid.
I hope someone gets behind this one and soon...
I rather doubt it.
It works. The Hawaii Energy Lab on the Big Island did it, though I think the program is dormant now. Mondo pipes about 10' in diameter, routed way the hell down to very deep water.
Read the link. Plant cost would be less than that for coal or nuclear. The kinetic energy of ocean currents is free.
That's the problem--projects like Hoover Dam are nearly impossible to initiate these days. You've got environmental red tape (and environazis), NIMBY-ism, etc. Heck, we can't even build new oil refineries to meet demand.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/24/news/newsmakers/gates_ethanol/index.htm
"The investment vehicle for the world's richest man, Cascade Investment, has acquired a 25.5 percent stake in Pacific Ethanol, a Fresno, Calif., based outfit that distributes ethanol throughout California, Nevada, Arizona and Oregon."
You heard it here first ;)
Got to get to my stock broker.
They are putting unreliable power into the grid which must still be backed up with expensive power plants to cover the times when the wind doesn't blow. Windfarms are another feelgood environmentally correct (unless Teddy Kennedy can see them from his front porch) form of energy. They might actually contribute if they can find more efficient batteries to store excess energy.
Your speculation on downstream climate effects is not informed by the math. It would take sapping hundreds of gigawatts of power to even begin to make a climate effect. In any event, Iceland and the British Isles don't vote in USA elections.
Read the link, the plant is submarine.
This could be done. How many joules, ergs, Btus, kWhr do you need, and which $ trillion lottery did you win?
Bobby Kennedy Jr. doesn't even want an above-water wind farm near his Nantucket Mansion: http://www.capewind.org
Nope---that's a different process. Called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion). This "Gulf Stream" is essentially to put large "windmill" style structures into the moving current, and is actually more practical than OTEC.
So you are not going to take any positive action, like writing your congressman, because the environmentalists might object?
Source for that estimate? Not saying you are wrong, but I'd like to read the actual report. And given the inefficency of a lot of power conversion schemes, you may be up to gigawatts consumed before you are in the range of megawatts produced to be on par with a conventional power plant.
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