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Common scientific opinion is that wind makes waves.
No wind, no waves. There is no 1 week delay. It's fairly immediate. Even for a tsunami which has much longer wavelength, the effect is felt in hours not weeks.
For more info, look here at the bottom picture
"But even when you feel no wind at all, you may encounter large swells created by distant storms."
When considering wave power, it is necessary to differentiate between:-
Wind generated waves - can be described as the waves created by wind blowing at that place and time.
Swell waves - waves that are generated elsewhere and have travelled from their place of origin.
The comment with reference to the short time interval before the effects of a tsunami are felt is misleading. Wave speed is directly related to wavelength, waves due to seismic disturbance typically have wavelengths measured in hundreds of kilometers as opposed to tens / hundreds of metres for normal swell. The effects of distance storms can be felt many days after the storm in distance locations.
I am aware of 2 companies with differing approaches to wave power, with systems approaching commercial reality.
http://www.oceanpd.com
http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com
It will be interesting to watch thier progress as they attempt to scale up.
Dave.
I am an Alumni of Edinburgh University, and I spent the good part of 3 years studying/working in a building which housed Europe's largest wave tank at the time. The tank belonged to the University's Mechanical Engineering Departments "Wave Power Group" which was set up in the 70s during the Oil Crisis.
The group was headed by a guy called Stephen Salter who is now a professor there.
To quote the Wikipedia section on the Wave Power page:
"His invention, Salter's Edinburgh Duck, continues to be the machine against which all others are measured. In small scale controlled tests, the Duck's curved cam-like body can stop 90% of wave motion and can convert 90% of that to electricity."
This amazing device was also seen as a major savour of coastal regions that get serious problems of erosion from wild seas.
Unfortunately by the time the design got recoginition, politics overtook it and the 'Duck' was totally discredited.
"According to sworn testimony before the House of Parliament, The UK Wave Energy program was shuttered on March 19, 1982 in a closed meeting, the details of which remain secret. The members of the meeting were recruited largely from the nuclear and fossil fuels industries, and the wave programme manager, Clive Grove-Palmer, was excluded."
The UK Nuclear industry effectively killed it. The nail in the coffin was the (some consider deliberate) miscalculation of the duck's efficiency by an 'independent' analyst that meant the figure was out by a factor of 10.
I still hold great hope for the resurrection of Salter's Duck, and I hope that Stephen Salter gets the recognition he deserves within his lifetime.
All this nonsense about technologies being "suppressed" gets aired on the Internet, but it is all nonsense, from the Pogue carburettor on.
Do you think the Japanese or Chinese would not instantly glom onto some technology that actually worked?
The whole episode with Salter's Duck occurred while I was studying in the very same building where they developed the Duck itself. My best mate at the time was a Mech. Eng. student and everyone knew what had happened to the Duck. We all felt very frustrated that it seemed hopeless to save the project.
Lancaster Polytechnic did a trial of one tenth-sized prototypes in Loch Ness (The science TV program "Tomorrow's World" did a piece on it at the time) that proved that it was very effective at harnessing wave power, but that was just before the deliberate miscalculation of it's efficiency killed the project.
Recently, FujitaResearch released a report which said that:
"the 'Salter Duck' can produce electricity for less than $US0.05 per kWh"
I'm just glad that Stephen has stuck to his beliefs and carried on working on wave energy. I'm sure he will be rewarded for it eventually.
Thank you.
(I have not studied it)
United States Patent 4,300,871
Laithwaite , et al. November 17, 1981
Method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves
Abstract
In a method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves on a liquid, the precession of a gyroscope in response to angular motion of a member in response to waves performs useful work by operating a hydraulic pump. Advantageously, pairs of gyroscopes having their rotors spinning in opposite directions are mounted in the member so as to balance the output torques of the gyroscopes.
Inventors: Laithwaite; Eric R. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2); Salter; Stephen H. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2)
Appl. No.: 107366
Filed: December 26, 1979
Two things to note about this patent:
- The date - not that it's boxing day (which is odd in itself), but this was right in Oil crisis territory (1979)
- Both the inventors have an addres co the UK Atomic Energy Authority
Now Don, please post a link to the article which details why this is an Urban Myth.Of course the device will work in an indoor tank with carefully controlled wind velocities.
Do you have the faintest idea what waves driven by gale force winds look like?
But the Mech. Eng guys knew exactly what this kind of wave was like and did many experiments (using the wave tank, of course) that proved the survivability and efficiency of the Duck (pdf warning). Now make sure your read it this time.
I did not find "the" patent.
Just did a quicky search for the named inventor.
There were more than one that matched for Stephen S...
go to uspto.gov
pick patent search
pick advanced search
use the "in/" specifier to formulate a boolean search that includes the named inventor
Stepback's link to a patent, in Salter's own name, doesn't provide much evidence either way. The 20+ year history of wave derived energy has not produced any commercially viable products. I don't believe this is because the only viable technology was invented, then misappropriated.
I would like to see Don provide more subsatantive documentation of his claims. However, in my mind, this one still should be filed under urban myth.
You've been very negative in this thread without providing even one link to something that discredits the Duck. So how about it? Can you actually point us to some credible evidence that this is snakeoil?
While you are away looking, here are some other articles to keep the others amused while they wait (and wait, and wait...)
Science News article "Oceans of Electricity"
"Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh and other researchers, mainly in the United Kingdom, devoted about a decade to the goal of building large-scale, 2,000-megawatt wave-energy plants. The collapse of that program--whether because of inadequate support or overly ambitious goals--left wave energy with a credibility problem and scared off investors. Now, wave energy is riding a new surge."
a little page at TechnologyStudent.com with cute animated GIFS of the Duck
Australia's Research Institute for Sustainable Power's page on wave power:
"The Salter Duck is able to produce energy extremely efficiently, however its development was stalled during the 1980s due to a miscalculation in the cost of energy production by a factor of 10 and it has only been in recent years when the technology was reassessed and the error identified."
This article from Glasgow's Strathclyde University actually criticises the Duck (i'm trying to help you out here, Don):
"Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device." (Next generation, eh? Obviously years ahead of it's time!)
[The US DoE's "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy"s web page on wave power] says:
"Sophisticated mechanisms--like the Salter Duck--use the bobbing motion of the waves to power a pump that creates electricity." (hmmmm. Sophisticated snakeoil!)
Now, American institutions are much more capable of passing snakeoil, so this October 2005 White Paper from MIT is probably less believable :) (pdf warning). Here's a more complex quote:
"One of the earliest innovations is the design by Professor Stephen Salter of the U. of Edinburgh. It consists of a long line of two-dimensional cams hinged on a horizontal axis near the sea surface and parallel to the shore. The cross-section resembles a tear-drop with a pointed beak facing the sea and a circular rear facing the shore. The diameter is large enough so that little energy is transmitted past the cams. Energy is extracted from the rolling motion of the cam. By adjusting the energy absorption rate optimally, the cam radiates waves that are equal in ampliutde but opposite in phase with the waves reflected by the mere presence of the cam. Hence all the incident wave energy can in principle be removed. There are two criteria for complete (ideal) absorption: (i) the cam motion must be resonated by the incident waves, and (ii) the power extraction rate must be equal to the rate of radiation damping carried by the radiated waves due to the cam motion. Because of its geometry, the device is widely known as Salter's Duck."
Oh, and here's the Wave Power Group's official homepage at Edinburgh University (one of the UK's oldest Universities with a great tradition in snakeoil!)
It's 3am here now, so I better get to bed. I'll check back in the morning to see what you have come up with.
Since you are too lazy to do it yourself, here is a paragraph from the Fujita Research Corporation Report that I posted a link to above:
"The 'Salter Duck' was developed in the 1970s by Professor Stephen Salter at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (email Shs@srv1.mech.ed.ac.uk) and generates electricity by bobbing up and down with the waves. Although it can produce energy extremely efficiently it was effectively killed off in the mid 1980s when a European Union report miscalculated the cost of the electricity it produced by a factor of 10. In the last few years, the error has been realised, and interest in the Duck is becoming intense."
Would you like to tell the Fujita Corporation that they are blowing smoke out their asses?
For god's sake look at the patent! Why would the address of two Edinburgh University researchers be filed as the "UK Atomic Energy Agency". Do you not think that the UKAEA might have wanted to 'field calls' from prospective clients? Maybe you guys think they just wanted to offer Stephen Salter a free forwarding service!
Now whether the miscalculation was deliberate or just an act of stupidity, the reality is that the European Union report 'stuck' enough to kill the project at the time.
As I said above, I just hope Stephen gets the recognition he deserves.
Don made claims against the aforementioned invention. It has been proven to exist, and DuncanK backed up his claims adequately.
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
Technically, my 90% is actually incorrect because it is 90% efficient at extracting the energy from the 90% of the original wave that it absorbs. So it is actually only 81% efficient.
As the Strathclyde University article that I quoted above says:
"Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device."
Now the Oscillating Wave Column (OWC) design (similar to the LIMPET 500 on Islay) may be simpler, but it is probably not as efficient as the Duck. Efficiency is not everything, of course.