Wave energy in action - the Moores Law analogy
I'd not actually seen this video before but its interesting to see some wave prototypes working. This is of course also a try-out embedding video into blogger software which might prove quite useful in the future.
Have a look here if you want to see the recently upgraded wave turbine on the Scottish island of Islay which is now generating electricity.
And to explain just how the above one works, its a fairly simple concept- a lever operated pivoting float. You can simply anchor one moving part and allow the frame around the fixed point to rise and fall- this creates the 'pivot' motion. You capture the energy of the motion and convert into electricity. Obviously as you scale up, you get greater amounts of electricity being created. Since its reliant on wave energy, and the moon doesn't seem to want to stop rotating the earth every 27.322 days, then this seems a reasonable renewable energy idea indeed. Just think about the Southern Oceans and the waves there and you can see that this could become a reliable source of energy, albeit not necessarily of the largest amount at this time. Which is the point at which you need to engage your brain...
Moores Law
A curveball thought for you though, Moores Law (happily recalled from my optoelectronic days spent working at Marconi and Bookham Technology) states that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. So as an analogy, why should it not be that the amount of energy than can be extracted from a chosen square metre of the ocean should not double every two years? With significant development and refining of the manufacturing process, critical analysis of the losses in order to maximise the overall product efficiency and with the reinvestment of all income received for the sale of electricity built in the successive development plants needed to demonstrate scaleable technology, it might not be such a crazy idea after all.
Have a look here if you want to see the recently upgraded wave turbine on the Scottish island of Islay which is now generating electricity.
And to explain just how the above one works, its a fairly simple concept- a lever operated pivoting float. You can simply anchor one moving part and allow the frame around the fixed point to rise and fall- this creates the 'pivot' motion. You capture the energy of the motion and convert into electricity. Obviously as you scale up, you get greater amounts of electricity being created. Since its reliant on wave energy, and the moon doesn't seem to want to stop rotating the earth every 27.322 days, then this seems a reasonable renewable energy idea indeed. Just think about the Southern Oceans and the waves there and you can see that this could become a reliable source of energy, albeit not necessarily of the largest amount at this time. Which is the point at which you need to engage your brain...
Moores LawA curveball thought for you though, Moores Law (happily recalled from my optoelectronic days spent working at Marconi and Bookham Technology) states that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. So as an analogy, why should it not be that the amount of energy than can be extracted from a chosen square metre of the ocean should not double every two years? With significant development and refining of the manufacturing process, critical analysis of the losses in order to maximise the overall product efficiency and with the reinvestment of all income received for the sale of electricity built in the successive development plants needed to demonstrate scaleable technology, it might not be such a crazy idea after all.
Labels: Wave-energy-in-action Moores-Law-analogy lever-operated-pivoting-float
posted by Neil Kurz at
22:40
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