The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[LP]

The final report of the Australian Tidal Energy (AUSTEn) three-year project to map Australia’s tidal energy resource in detail and assess its economic feasibility and ability to contribute to the country's renewable energy needs:

https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/12/tida...tralia.pdf

Yes, there are lots of these turning up after Carnegie went belly up. There is big dollars involved, and I wish Mako well, but having CSIRO or UQ as research partners might not help them. There could be some nice technologies developed on the side along the way, as long as the partners are prepared to recognise spins offs, sometimes they are too myopic.

My problem is the claims around potential grow with every round of funding renewal, and that growth in claim often far outstrips the real world performance improvement. I'm not a naysayer just as sceptic, I've been seeing this stuff for over a decade now from the likes of SIMEC and it's precursors companies that went the same was as Carnegie. I thought the best chance was from an older technology version called vertical access turbines, think of a giant version of one of those spinning signs you see on the pavement outside shops and cafés. They at least rotate slower but with large spans they have massive amounts of torque to drive geared generators.

There is a great page that keeps track of this stuff here;
http://www.emec.org.uk/marine-energy/tidal-developers/