Helinski+Oil+Alternative

=What is Tidal Energy?=

Along with wave and oceanic thermal power, tidal power is a form of alternative energy that converts the kinetic and potential energy stored within oceanic tides into electricity. These tides are created from the gravitational interaction between the earth and the moon, which causes the movement of the oceanic water in the form of currents. Although not as popular as conventional alternatives such as wind and solar energy, tidal power is more predictable and reliable than both. The reasoning for the unpopularity of tidal power is due to its relatively high initial cost and the limited space of geographical areas where tidal power could be exploited. The map below is a representation of the global locations where it would be beneficial to implement a form of tidal power. The scale on the bottom represents the overall change in ocean height from high tide to low tide, with the greater then difference representing the greater possibility for tidal energy production. Although this specifically correlates with the barrage style tidal power plant, the other forms are most beneficial in these locations as well due to the presence of usually shallower waters as well as an strong current, wither it be into the shore or away.

Figure 1 World Tidal Potential Locations//



// Figure 2 US Tidal Potential Locations[[file: // /C:/Users/Nick/Desktop/Oil Politics/Tidal Energy.docx#_ftn2|**[2]**]]

Figure 2 shows more specifically the locations within the US that yield the greatest opportunity for harnessing tidal energy. All of these locations are located within shallower waters close to land that cause that tides to have the most kinetic energy as the water becomes even shallower. Another advantage of accessing the potential of tidal power over that of wind is the difference in the medium densities that are being used. Oceanic salt water is 832 times denser than air////, which yields in much higher energy density available from the current of an oceanic tide compared to that of a gust of wind. With these density differences, a 5 knot oceanic current can provide more kinetic energy than a 350 km/h wind. With the much higher rates of kinetic energy within the oceanic currents, tidal stream turbines can be built with much larger turbines spinning at much lower frequencies in order to generate electricity without causing harm to the surrounding eco systems. The density of the water also allows for the turbines to be placed much closer to one another without having the concern of effecting another turbines performance as in wind turbines.// //It is predicted that any given moment there is approximately 5,000GW of energy that could be harnessed, or approximately 12%-22% or the world’s power consumption, resulting in an average market of approximately $550 billion US dollars. Understanding that not all of this potential is achievable of being harnessed, it is none the less a huge potential resource of energy. Some predictions have stated that if 0.1% of the ocean’s power could be harnessed, it would be enough energy to meet the world demand five times over. =History=

The history of tidal power utilization can be dated to as far back as 787 A.D. from the Roman occupation of England. Archeologists uncovered what they believe to be a stone tidal wheel with paddles attached to the wheel in order to have water turn then wheel as it passed over. This wheel was located near a stone tidal pond which was believed to hold water during high tide, and then released over the wheel once the waters retreated. More comparable to the modern barrage style tidal power plant, the Eling Mill has been documented in records dating back to the Domesday Survey in 1086, which accounted for all property owned in England////. Over the past 900 years the mill has been owned by different parties and rebuilt several times due to weather damage and structural instabilities, yet the rebuilds have continually been accomplished to keep the original method of the mill intact. The basic explanation of how the mill worked can be seen below.//



// Figure 3 Eling Mill Operation // //The Eling mill is located between the ocean and a 3 km long tidal pond which floods during the high tides experienced by the UK. The mill has a dam which extends from the side of the structure to the opposing side of the tidal pond completely separating the pond from the ocean. In the dam structure there are a series of gates which are opened as the tide begins to rise, filling the tidal pond. Once the tide has achieved it highest state the gates are closed capturing all of the water in the pond. Once the tide has receded below the level of the water wheel, a gate at the entrance of the wheel is opened allowing the water to flow back into the lower water level ocean turning the wheel into a series of gears which was used to crush grain and crops. This process took about five and a half hours and could be performed during the two high tides within a 24 hour period of time.//



// Figure 4 Modern Image of Eling Mill[[file: // /C:/Users/Nick/Desktop/Oil Politics/Tidal Energy.docx#_ftn6|**[6]**]]

The next advancement in tidal power came in 1966 in Brittany, France where the world’s first tidal power station was designed and opened for the purpose of electrical generation. During the oil crisis of the mid 1970’s, interest began to boom and investments were made by the British government for the British General Electric Co. to investigate the potential of harnessing tidal power. It was until 1976 that the first recorded experimentation was conducted using tidal stream turbines as methods of harnessing tidal energy. =Tidal Energy Today=

Currently there are three main forms of tidal energy plants either in operation, under construction, or planned for future construction. These forms include Tidal Barrage Power Plants, Tidal Stream generators, and Dynamic Tidal Power harnessing. Barrage plants are based on the same concepts as the Eling Mill mentioned earlier. A basin will fill with water and then be closed off only allowing the water to return to the ocean through bulb type turbines in the barrage. Additional pumping from the turbines may incur in order to raise the water level in the basin further. // //there are only five operational tidal barrage power plants in the world with another under construction. Because barrage plants are more dependent on the rising and falling of the tides, there are only approximately twenty sites around the world that experience a drastic enough of a tidal change where it would be beneficial to install a barrage tidal plant. Although the locations are limited, there are an additional nine barrages that have had construction plans discussed, yet lack the proper funding to being construction now. Many of these proposed sites have enormous capacity projections ranging from 500-87,000 MW. These projects generally depend on governmental funding due to their sheer size and complexity. Some of the projects in planning have been delayed due to their high initial costs and lack of governmental ability to supply the appropriate funding where needed.



Figure 5 Rance Barrage Tidal Station
 * Station || Capacity (MW) || Country || Commissioned || Form of Generation ||
 * Rance || 240 || France || 1966 || Barrage ||
 * Kislaya Guba || 1.7 || Russia || 1968 || Barrage ||
 * Jiangxia || 3.2 || China || 1980 || Barrage ||
 * Annapolis Royal || 20 || Canada || 1984 || Barrage ||
 * Uldolmok || 1.0 || South Korea || 2009 || Barrage ||
 * SeaGen || 1.2 || UK || 2008 || Tidal Stream ||

Tidal stream generators are a much newer form of tidal power generation and only have begun to enter the commercial market as a viable means of electrical generation. Based on the same concepts as wind turbines, these turbines would be placed in locations of shallow waters that experience strong currents throughout the day, traditionally in straights or between landmasses. There are several companies involved in this form of tidal power including Verdant Power, Neptune Renewable Energy, Marine Current Turbines, SMD Hydrovision, Open Hydro, and Hammerfest Strom which are located within either the US, UK, Ireland or Norway. The density of the sea water is 832 times denser than air as mentioned earlier, making tidal stream turbines much more potential than conventional wind turbines. The only current commercial scale device installed in the world is named SeaGen and is located off the coast of Northern England, owned by Marine Current Turbines////. This individual turbine is the first of a experimental phase, where four additional turbines are in the works of being installed. The closest projects to becoming commercial scale are the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project (RITE), owned by Verdant power, as well as the European Marine Energy Centre’s (EMEC) AK1000 which was just installed off of Eday, Orkney Scotland which can be seen in figure 5. The RITE project is the first project within the United States that is almost complete with its prototype phases, while the EMEC project is a pilot run of a potential project including 10 of the 59ft long turbine fin generators in northern Scotland. Most of the many pilot projects that are currently being worked on have received grants from either the EU, government research grants or from private investors to initiate these individual projects. They are intended to generate pilot turbines which will then receive further private investors to scale the turbines to commercial size farms. The third kind of tidal power is called Dynamic Tidal Power or DTP. This method of energy extraction from the ocean is only in the development stages and has had no implementation recorded to date. The idea behind DTP is to access the energy in the cost-parallel oscillating tides that travel parallel to coastlines in one direction and return later in the day with the changing tides. The idea is to construct a damn that extends directly out from the shore approximately 30-60 kilometers in the general shape of a T. As the tides travel against this dam structure, the water is prevented from flowing which causes a discrepancy in the water levels from one side to the other. Similar to the structure of the tidal barrages, the dam would be equipped with turbines spaced along the length which would allow the water to reach to other side. These turbines would then generate electricity from the flowing water through them. Although the estimation for a DTP dam is said to produce enough energy to power 3.4 million European homes, the sheer feasibility behind this concept needs serious development. The extreme length of the dams is required to make the project economically feasible. Any dam below the 30 km mark would cost too much in construction cost to make the electrical production economically worthwhile. Once the appropriate distances were made though, the potential is enormous.

Figure 6 Example DTP Dam

=Specified Projects=

La Rance Tidal Power Station
The location for the La Rance tidal station was studied from 1943 until 1961 by the Society for the Study of Utilization of the Tides in France until enough information was gather to proceed with the very detailed La Rance Tidal Power Plant project. The location was determined to be ideal to capture potential energy of the rising and falling tides due to the recorded average 8.2 to 13.5 meter differences between the highest and lowest points, the highest average documented in all of France. Construction began in 1961 when two years were put towards constructing two dams to ensure the construction zone would remain dry from weather conditions and flooding. The barrage’s construction was begun in 1963 and completed in the fall of 1966.

Figure 7 Rane Tidal Station Setup As it can be seen in figure 7, the La Rance Tidal station is composed of several basic concepts that appear in all barrage style tidal plants. The ship lock located to the left allows for ships to safely pass through the power plant regardless of what stage of power production is occurring. This lock currently experiences approximately 20,000 ship passages per year. The power plant portion of the plant is composed of 24 bulb turbines which are each rated at 10 MW, bringing the total plant capacity to 240 MW. With a high capacity factor of 40% the La Rance plant produces on average 540 GW per yea, enough to power 200,000 French homes. The dyke portion is a stone structure to provide foundation for the buildings and roads to be supported on top of the plant. The six gates located on the right hand side compose the actual barrage which are opened and closed in order to allow the water to fill the basin during high tide. The operations of the tidal plant experience the following breakdown of operation:
 * Method of Electric Generation || Percentage of Time ||
 * Ebb Generation || 60% ||
 * Reverse Pumping (basin to sea) || 0% ||
 * Flood Generation || 2 to 6% ||
 * Free Flow || 20% ||
 * Direct Pumping (sea to basin) || 15 to 20% ||



Figure 8 Model of Bulb Turbine The current plant is maintained and operational around the clock by 28 employees regularly. During the construction of the project its cost were approximate €95 million ($140 million) in 1966 which would be equivalent to €580 million ($859 million) in 2009. A breakdown of the funding was unable to be located but due to the sheer size of the project as well as the length of the construction, a majority of the funding was most likely supplied by the French government, as this project was directly conducted to provide electricity for French homes who are the beneficiaries. The only stakeholder who may have an unfavorable outcome from such a system is the ecosystems that are native to the bodies of water in the area. During the closing of the basin during construction, the ecosystems were essentially destroyed, yet most of the species were flourishing again by 1976. There are only two recorded species which have not returned to the basin. As this project was built in 1966 there have been extensive efforts by a variety of mechanical as well as marine engineers with the upkeep and maintenance of this structure. There have been renovations done to the initial system to ensure that the efficiency is kept high as well as all components are fully operational. Major efforts were put into corrosion prevention once the plant was open which has led to a cathodic protection for the turbines being installed in the late 1970’s. Current maintenance composes of general upkeep of each of the components which are the only remaining expenses.

Located off of Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, Verdant power has been conducting a location specific experiment of tidal stream potential in the East River since 2002. This location is ideal due to the fast flowing current of the East River in addition to distance between the possible farm location and the area of electrical generation use. The first phase of the project was to explore the potential and efficiency of a tidal stream turbine. These turbines were the world’s first turbines to be bidirectional and the first to be implemented into a tidal farm, allow for the East River tidal turbines to achieve anywhere between 80-90% capacity factor. This allows for electrical production regardless of tidal direction.

Figure 9 Proposed Project Area

Upon successfully designing a sufficient turbine, phase two composed of the installation of six of the prototype turbines into the East River to observe behaviors as well as operational results. This phase was completed in May of 2007. The completion of the six turbine installation was the world’s first array of directly grid connected tidal turbines. The RITE project has already become a world leader in energy provided by tidal flow turbines as well as been the first and longest running horizontal axis tidal turbine farm. After completion of the second phase, the turbines had to be redesigned due to damages to the fins from experiencing stronger currents than what were predicted. The good news about this redesign is that the currents in the East River consist of much more kinetic energy than what was originally predicted////.

Figure 10 Lowering of Phase 2 Turbine into the East River The third and final phase of the project consists if installation of up to 300 of the Verdant turbines in the East River, predicted to provide 10 MW of electricity to New York City capable of powering 8,000 New York homes. The current phase plan is to begin by installing 30 turbines once a design has been finalized, which citizens are eagerly awaiting due to the high interest in the advancement and development. The details of the three phases can be broken down to the following objectives: · Phase 1 (2002-2006) o Prototype turbine development, demonstration, and testing o Site Analysis o Permitting · Phase 2 (2006-2008) o Design and fabrication of next generation turbines o Deployment of six operational turbines o Permitting and licensing for full commercial operation · Phase 3 (2009-2012) o Design, fabrication, deployment of commercial scale turbine o Full field build out of RITE project// //The overall cost of the RITE project is predicted to be approximately $8 million dollars. Much of the cost is predicted to go towards the demonstration and prototype stages, yet Verdant power has also incorporated $2 million dollars in fish and wildlife monitoring equipment to minimize the environmental impact of the turbine farm. Much of the initial and research funding of the RITE project has been provided by State grants due to the high amount of community interest in the project. Roughly $2.5 million dollars have been provided by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. In addition to the state grants, Verdant power has also received large investments from KeySpan who is the largest owner of a private electric generator in New York State.

In order for the RITE project to be a success, the continual work of structural and mechanical engineers will be needed to finalize the design of a tidal turbine that will be able to withstand the strong currents of the East River. The first prototype turbines had the fins dismembered by the stronger than predicted currents. Second generation turbines have experienced uncomfortable high levels of stress in the bolts attaching the fins to the hub which have recently been redesigned. =Conclusion=

The research done into the potential of tidal power production throughout the world has revealed an immense energy source that I had been unaware of previously. Understanding the potential that could be achieved by tapping into this global energy source provides great hope for one day being independent of crude oil and fossil fuels, in addition to continual use of more conventional alternative energies. Although the available energy from tidal kinetic energy is immense, the only thing that stands in the way are the initially high costs as well as the lack of development in such areas as tidal stream turbines. I believe that this method is a very reasonable and achievable method of obtaining even more energy than what has been previously projected. This method is less impacting on the environment and may face lower initial costs once the production and implementation of axial tidal turbines has been mastered. The La Rance Tidal Power Plant is a great start for the tidal energy world, yet advancements need to be made to ensure that tidal power is being harnessed as efficiently as possible. The RITE project is only a glimpse of the huge potential for future methods of tidal power stations. In order to support the advancement of project like the RITE project, individuals can simply express their interest in such sources by writing to a local congressman about specific projects or research what kind of actions can be taken to show support. One of the reasons for the success and continual grants for the RITE project is due to the immense amount of community support and interest in the project. Continual interest from the individual level can lead to knowledge spreading to the general public, showing government officials public interests in such alternatives. Reitering the potential for the future, if 0.1% of the ocean’s energy was harnessed, it would be enough energy to feed the world’s energy demands five times over. In my opinion, that is something worth investing in.

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[[file:  // /C:/Users/Nick/Desktop/Oil Politics/Tidal Energy.docx#_msoanchor_1|[s1]]]Talk about eeb, pumping, free flow methods of barrages

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