Correspondents' Correspondence White-Horse Power
LAND, THOMAS
Correspondents' correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PJBONAL.INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. White-Horse Power Edinburgh?Gathering energy from the...
...Any location with a coastline and waves or surf," Salter points out, "has a potential alternative source of energy...
...While present calculations suggest that a few hundred miles of installations could supply Britain's total electricity requirement, scientists envisage the day when water-power structures may traverse the Atlantic at 100-milc intervals...
...Each generator, a steel-and-concrete box about the size of a supertanker, would be submerged to a depth of about 65 feet, with three feet showing above the surface...
...Their effect on marine life would be minimal, and in times of unusually rough weather they could escape damage by submerging completely...
...Ten of them would cost as much to build as a large nuclear power station, and could theoretically produce enough power to fuel a city...
...An experiment based on a research project that has been studying the problem for four years was conducted this month at Loch Ness, in the Scottish highlands...
...Solar energy is not much good for the northern climates, and wind itself is not dense enough—it requires too much equipment for the power you get...
...Britain's interest in white-horse power was stimulated by the energy crisis of 1973-74, when it was realized that Middle East oil producers could no longer be relied upon for unlimited supplies of petroleum...
...Bobbing back and forth, they produced electricity by turning a series of bearings that drove a piston pump...
...As Salter says, it "is clean, safe, permanent, and uses relatively simple and well-known technology...
...But I discovered that if the ball was tipped so that the hinge was below the surface, the rate was much better?about 60 per cent...
...Stephen Salter, the leader of the group, explains that he came upon the idea of using the ocean as a generator while doing "a few sums about the energy in sea waves, guessing their sizes...
...The next step, officials hope, will be the establishment of a prototype station in the Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland...
...Another specialist notes additional advantages: "Waves are potted wind...
...It looked, too, as though a to-and-fro movement was better than the more obvious up-and-down...
...I was amazed at the amount of power that seemed to be available...
...Whatever the future brings, though, there is no doubt that wave power will be looked to more and more in the years to come...
...But in Britain, where much of the technology required for harnessing "white-horse power" is already available, it may soon become a reality...
...White-Horse Power Edinburgh?Gathering energy from the movement of the sea has long been a fantasy of science-fiction writers...
...And when we have mass production, wave power will become competitive in cost with other energy producers...
...It took me very little time to make a dynamometer that could measure how much of the available energy the device got out—about 15 per cent...
...But after the wind has been stoking power into a 100-mile reach at sea, we ought to be able to get it out again...
...Salter found that the best extraction mechanism "was similar to a lavatory ball cock that bobbed up and down like a pump...
...Perhaps the most important feature of white-horse power is its almost unlimited availability...
...For the ?50,000 ($425,000) test, financed jointly by Britain's Department of Energy and private industry, 25 duck-shaped fiberglass units, each about seven feet high, were stretched over some 165 feet of water...
...A government think tank had already identified wave power as the most promising source of alternative energy for the U.K., and in 1974 London commissioned a three-year feasibility study of a plan prepared by a team of scientists at Edinburgh University...
...Thomas Land...
...The fruit of the team's research is a design for large, free-floating breakwaters employing moving vanes that should capture 90 per cent of the available energy, according to advanced laboratory tests...
Vol. 60 • April 1977 • No. 9
