Notice, no Water.
The PacNW gets no love from the Obama Administration
The Obama administration has proposed a 25 percent cut in the research and development budget for one of the most promising renewable energy sources in the Northwest — wave and tidal power.
At the same time the White House sought an 82 percent increase in solar power research funding, a 36 percent increase in wind power funding and a 14 percent increase in geothermal funding, it sought to cut wave and tidal research funding from $40 million to $30 million.
If our two Senators, Patty “Osama bin Laden builds daycare centers” Murray and Maria “Can’tVoteWell” Cantwell would keep their damn eyes on the prize instead of dallying with shit our state doesn’t need attending to, this wouldn’t have happened.
Just last month a set of these power generators was OK’d to be set off in Puget Sound by Mr. Completely’s place. The things have four legs and can be moved around if a better location is discovered or if for some reason their location suddenly becomes a shipping lane. All you see is a damn buoy floating on top of the water and the fish could care less. Twice a year cleanings is the required maintenance. Hit the link for a rather well done drawing.
But noooooo, The President’s folks would rather cover the state of Nevada with solar panels that can’t be manufactured fast enough to meet his production targets and every ridge line mowed down and topped with a propeller until alien civilizations begin to wonder if they have religious significance.
I sincerely hope Rossi takes on Cantwell next time around. She hikes up our gas prices and her inattentiveness is going to mean higher electrical rates now too.
The Frogs have been getting power from tidal since the late forties. Their first efforts included damming small bays, which fill with each high tide, then running the outflow through a turbine. Navigation into and out of the bays was accomplished by locks in the tradional manner. That has now been refined into some sort of eco-friendly setup of just putting a sluice of sorts on the bottom of the bay, and using that out and in flow (needs to be only 5 knots to work) to spin a generator.
The advantage of some of these hydraulic schemes is that they can pull double-duty as storm-surge control equipment.
The EU has already done the work for us, probably not too much research left to do, except to prove the eco-friendliness.
Didn’t some company propose putting some type of power generating set-up under the waters of the Tacoma Narrows several years ago? At their expense yet! Anybody who’s ever been over the bridge or lived here for any length of time knows how swift and dangerous those waters are, especially at tide change. But noooooo
our “powers that be” found some, I’m certain, (with a wink and a grin) very valid, logical reason for turning them down and sending them on their way. If I remember right they didn’t even seriously take it into consideration. Fools. Wonder if they wish they had that offer back in front of them?
The Brits have some major tidal stuff going on in the Thames estuary – don;’t know if it’s power or just hydro-management.
Tidal and hydro is the only “green” power that works 24/7 – at night when solar goes to sleep, and it keeps on flowing when the wind stops blowing (supposing that geothermal is a sub-set of hydro). And more than fish caring less, the probably LIKE it.
But that’s not where big-time knee-capping, graft and patronage can be tapped-into – which is the main product of this administration…
To be fair, many Greens are ignorant. They think solar panels and wind generators can be put anywhere -because the sun shines everywhere and the gently cooling breezes blow everywhere in their little socialist eco-topias- and would be able to power everything in your household, vehicles in garage included. That’s why they think more about wind and solar generation. No ones told them how little power wind and solar generate per home, not do they full understand what effect tons of home wind generators would have. But hydroelectric is bad according to them because the Druids….er, people at the EPA and the Sierra Club have told them hydroelectric harms the eco-system and the fishies, and because it comes from the EPA it’s Holy Writ.
The problem with solar and wind power is that it simply can’t provide base load. As DFW pointed out, the wind won’t always blow and the sun don’t always shine. I do have a prof who is very interested in various alternate types of power generation, and he showed us some stuff describing how solar is actually quite viable in the Pac NW due to our relatively clear summers with very long days compared to much of the southern US… helps make up for the short’n’cloudy days the rest of the year I guess. But still… that’s not base load. You need dedicated power sources pumping out energy day in and day out for that. For much of the US, that means coal (nuclear would do the same job much more cleanly), and around here hydropower carries a lot of it… but even that is subject to drought if it goes on long enough. I was up in the North Cascades Mermorial Day, Ross Lake is down more than 20 feet. Kind of sobering when it’s that low in May.
*Memorial Day. Oops.