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Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not a power engineer! So I'm just wondering whether harnessing tidal power will diminish that power over time, with results that
by R_Edward 14y ago
Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not a power engineer! So I'm just wondering whether harnessing tidal power will diminish that power over time, with results that might make global warming look like a church picnic by comparison. Conservation of matter and energy and what-not, right?
Of course, if we won't see any knock-on effects till well after the sun has expanded to incinerate the planet, then shoot, full speed ahead!
- _delirium 14y agoI can't seem to find a solid reference, but I recall reading that on a global scale it's negligible, similar to wind power: the amount of power extracted in even a deployment much larger-scale than anything we currently envision is a rounding error compared to the total power in the earth's tidal movements. There is some research on local environmental effects, however, since the amount of energy extracted from a particular bay's tidal flows might actually be noticeable. There's a review of that literature in Section 2 of this paper: http://www-civil.eng.ox.ac.uk/research/tidal/EWTEC2009_tidal_basin_paper.pdf http://www-civil.eng.ox.ac.uk/research/tidal/EWTEC2009_tidal...