Ocean energy

In Julius Caesar, Brutus tells us:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune :
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shadows, and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

This seems most appropriate here because much of the point of this blog is opportunities, and especially those related to the ocean (including literally tidal power).

As I've noted, I am the co-chair (with Dr. Dan Walker of Oceanic Consulting, http://www.oceaniccorp.com ) of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers ad hoc panel 17 on ocean alternative energy. Note that though this panel has just been formed, naval architects have been involved in ocean alternative energy for decades. I gave a presentation at the SNAME annual meeting on October 13, and if I can figure out how, I will upload the pdf, though meanwhile, I'll also convert it to a post, but an earlier version (given at a SNAME session meeting in May) is posted on the Autodesk sustainability website (www.autodesk.com/green) and on Tim Colton's marine website (www.coltoncompany.com, under May news).

This panel was formed to try to enhance communication between these projects to share data and to improve public awareness of the opportunities for oceanic sources of renewable energy and I will try to keep this blog updated with information from this panel.

There were representatives from a number of active ocean energy projects (which is why the panel was constituted), some of which included various types of floating wind turbines, at least one of which (a tension leg platform) is going into service off California this winter. I see offshore floating wind turbines as a very good idea for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with the "not in my backyard (or ocean view)" problem, and also the problem of bird and bat kills (see www.batcon.org for bat issues). Ocean winds also tend to be better distributed both in geography and in time than on land, and of course, there is a great deal more ocean real estate available. However, effective offshore wind turbines will require advanced type platforms, mostly, mainly using concepts from the offshore oil industry developed for marginal deep fields, because the cost of a bottom founded platform goes up as the cube of water depth, and simple barge mounted turbines will probably be neither cost effective, nor have acceptable motions. The three main concepts are spars, semi-submersibles and tension leg platforms, which will each be discussed in further posts, but can be looked up in Wikipedia.

There were also a number of wave energy projects, and at the May meeting, an active Ocean Thermal Energy project (www.seasolarpower.com).

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