The global movement of the seas through tidal streams and ocean currents generates a rich supply of energy that may be transformed into a dependable and local renewable energy source.
Aiming to further this mission, Swedish firm Minesto has now completed onshore testing on its 1.2 MW Dragon 12 tidal energy kite system. The system will be directly transferred to the Faroe Islands in Denmark for installation and commissioning.
[...] According to the firm, its kite system technology is a lightweight, flexible, and scalable solution to harvest tidal energy, which unlocks a predictable renewable energy resource.
[...] The firm's power plant comprises a wing that houses a turbine directly connected to a generator in a nacelle. The control system directs the kite's trajectory by manipulating the rudders and elevators at the back of the kite. The tether holds the tether as well as communication and power lines. The tether is attached to the seabed foundation via a simple connection that is locked and unlatched for installation and retrieval.
The kite is moved by the wing's utilization of the hydrodynamic lift force provided by the underwater stream. An onboard control system autonomously controls the kite in a predefined figure-of-eight trajectory, dragging the turbine through the water at a water flow several times greater than the stream speed.
The turbine shaft drives the generator, sending power to the grid via a cable in the tether and a seabed umbilical to the coast. According to Minesto, the subsea kite is intended to fly in the opposite direction of the main flow, attaining a relative speed several times that of the current rate. Compared to a stationary turbine, this speed increase minimizes the size of the kite and rotor necessary to capture energy. As a result, it is inexpensive to install, run, and maintain.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 13 2023, @01:35AM (7 children)
How long until some activist group does an expose about dead fish beneath the turbine?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Monday November 13 2023, @03:37AM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @04:03AM (2 children)
Nope, yellow.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday November 13 2023, @04:07AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday November 13 2023, @05:13AM
A yellow submarine.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 13 2023, @03:22PM (1 child)
In the last 5 years I've been asked to push back against both a natural gas compression station and a local quarry project because of noise and vibration. Humans don't want to live around loud shaky things.
The ocean transmits sound better than Earth, and many of the critters therein use sound to "see". It's not unreasonable to worry about the noise impact of marine wind turbines. One would hope that a kite-based system would be better in this regard.
My very limited maritime experience leaves me concerned that seabirds will be drawn to the kite (visually) as a roosting location and the seaborne structure as a fish attractant. Concentrating seabirds in the vicinity of the giant sky blender is unlikely to go well for the birds, but since they'll sink there won't be pictures of corpses to drive public outcry.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Monday November 13 2023, @04:38PM
If I'm understanding the article and system, it's all underwater. They're referring to it as a "kite" in the sense that we fly a kite in the air, but this thing is underwater. "Kite" is not meant literally, rather it's meant analogously to help people visualize what will be happening underwater.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Monday November 13 2023, @08:04PM
Depends on whether or not they stay out of the blades, the activists that is.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Monday November 13 2023, @02:04AM (2 children)
"As a result, it is inexpensive to install, run, and maintain."
These are words that have never been spoken about any piece of marine equipment, ever, in the history of the world. Best of luck to these eternal-optimists.
" The tether is attached to the seabed foundation via a simple connection that is locked and unlatched for installation and retrieval."
a simple connection? in seawater? someone has never scraped the bottom of a ship's hull or maintained a seabed mooring.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Monday November 13 2023, @02:50AM
They were spun-off from a company, saab, that builds military aircrafts, submarines, heavy vehicles and things that go boooom. Something tells me they probably know or someone at the company does.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 13 2023, @03:30AM
The simple connection? If we're gonna be fair and reasonable, the connection is the simplest possible, because a complex mechanism is going to corrode faster and worser than a simple one. Thinking along the lines of a super-large flag swivel snap, with a stainless bolt to hold it closed, instead of a spring. And, they'll still most likely need an underwater welder to cut the thing apart when they decide to move it.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @03:13AM (11 children)
tfa doesn't say prototype or proof of concept, but at 1.2 MW this is barely a baby dragon.
For example, from https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38312 [eia.gov]
Link has plots and other details.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday November 13 2023, @03:48AM (4 children)
The Fine Article says the system is ready for installation and commissioning in the Faroe Islands. So not really PoC, but you could reasonably see it as a beta test.
Faroe Island population is around 55,000.
Faroe Islands electricity generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Faroe_Islands [wikipedia.org] says they use oil among other things.
It'll be interesting to see how it works out in the long run.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Monday November 13 2023, @08:03AM (3 children)
They've already done a one-year beta test at the Faroes with two units back in 2020-21, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59401199 [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 13 2023, @04:40PM (2 children)
Thanks for the info. I might refer to that as an alpha test, but I won't argue semantics.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday November 13 2023, @06:07PM (1 child)
I *think* (from conversations with an employee) that they'd done previous shorter-term tests elsewhere, but I'm afraid I can't recall the details.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 13 2023, @06:27PM
Yes, and thank you for sharing your close-to-the-source knowledge. I'm (very) big on the concept of continuous development. But I'll contradict myself and say that I'm infuriated by so so so much horribly bad and broken software that is released to the public. I don't want to be someone's beta test, nor do I want my bank or airlines or any other important or critical infrastructure to be beta testing but in actual use. Every day we read stories of major computer networks and systems breaking or being attacked due to software flaws. I wish the whole world of software development could somehow adopt higher standards of quality. I know people are pushing Holy Grail programming languages that in fact are helping with some all-too-common programming errors. But my fear is what happens so much in society: okay we can be reckless now- such and such will protect us. (And yes, I'm guilty of this too, in many areas of life, including (sometimes) driving...)
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday November 13 2023, @06:09AM (3 children)
That 1.2MW sounds way outlandish for something that small. It must refer to a flotilla of these things. For reference, my dad's hydro power station has an effect of ~160kW from a fall height of around 10m (iirc).
...
Ah, if you watch that embedded video, it shows that what's planned for the Faroe Islands is 2x100kW. That sounds more believable, if still pretty damn high. If it works, credit to them.
The video also says "submerged at all times", so I guess there might be some unpleasant surprises if one tries to go fishing or drop anchor in the area...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kazzie on Monday November 13 2023, @07:55AM (2 children)
TFA mentions a "1.2 MW Dragon 12 tidal energy kite system", which is 12 * 100kW, as you surmised.
Minesto have built and installed some test turbines up at the Faroes over the past few years,; the significance of this article is that they're now installing a fleet of them on a more permanent basis.
The turbines are indeed permanently submerged, flying back and forth across the currents, tethered to the sea floor. It's not a place you want to drag trawler nets into!
The clever way they get the turbines to move faster than the water currents is similar to how sailships can move faster by sailing across the wind than they could if sailing with it.
(An ex-student of mine works for the firm, and was regularly to-ing and fro-ing to the Faroes during the test phase. I expect he's going to have his hands full with this up-coming installation work, too.)
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday November 13 2023, @11:54PM (1 child)
Ah, I got confused because the title says "1.2MW Dragon 12", as if the 12 was part of the model number.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:50AM
In your defense, it's not the clearest of phrasing. I got the wrong end of the stick too, at first.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday November 13 2023, @01:46PM
image a beowulf cluster of these.
(Score: 2) by higuita on Monday November 13 2023, @03:10PM
first, you are comparing a major central electricity production system vs a distributed system... the central one must be way more powerful, but is more expensive and a single point of failure, so you need even more excess capacity, just in case one of the fails, the others can fill the gap.
with distributed systems, you can deliver the electricity closer were it is needed (so less waste) and cam have many of those, one failure is just a drop in the sea of kites
next, you can scale by number instead of by size... yes, that increase the cost, but a gas turbine of that size is also a huge cost...
finally, after setup, wind have "low" maintenance costs, compared with gas, and in gas, you have the gas price, storage and consume... that price adds up with time
Now the other side, wind may not always run powerful enough to power this, but that is for all renewable... when they exist, it is "free" energy, if they don't, you have to use other renewable energies or fall back to gas/nuclear/storage/geothermal... but also, all energy sources need alternative backups or else you risk what happen in japan, where without the Fukushima and the other one that was shutdown also as precaution, the north of japan had major power issues as not enough alternatives existed (made worse by the awful power distribution and setup of japan, with 2 voltages and 2 frequencies)
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 13 2023, @03:16PM (1 child)
This system hangs a wind turbine underneath a big kite lifting body.
There is a chap working on an alternative approach where the kite *is* the turbine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFWwnkk5rk [youtube.com]
It's an interesting approach, though I (in ignorance) worry about tangles.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday November 13 2023, @06:17PM
Minesto have the turbine inside the (underwater) kite, not suspended underneath.
Having said that, the example you've linked is nifty and different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @05:32PM (3 children)
I've looked all along the coast of Egypt, and can't find them.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday November 13 2023, @06:12PM (1 child)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Faroe+Islands/@62.7326353,-16.8824766,5.58z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x48bc1593762df9eb:0x3fb0314864f71b24!8m2!3d61.892635!4d-6.9118061!16zL20vMDJ3OXM?entry=ttu [google.com]
I suspect I am being wooshed - but I cannot understand why you don't use something to tell you where to look. Fair enough, I am not very well today so perhaps I am missing something.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday November 13 2023, @07:35PM
Yeah, I got it as soon as I switched the computer off.
I spent literally hundreds, and possibly over a thousand hours flying Anti_Submarine_Warfare (ASW) patrols during the 1970s between Iceland/Faroe and Faroe/Shetland gaps. They were a convenient choke point for Soviet submarines which were leaving their Northern bases on route into the Atlantic Ocean, or perhaps returning to them. The word Faroe to me is so ingrained that I simply didn't see that it could have any other connections.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday November 13 2023, @09:16PM
... and I'm pretty certain they are not just off the southern coast of Portugal. They're Barreta and Culatra [openstreetmap.org].