Electricity from Slow-Moving Water

Off Make Magazine’s blog, I’m snipping most of the Make blog entry here:

Capturing the same powerful forces that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shortly after it was built in 1940, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world.

This technology is hoped to be easier to site than traditional windmills and hydropower generators.

[link]

So, I’m posting this here for the alternative energy expert in the family – R!  Enjoy!

 

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This idea is particularly interesting to me, as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, where our massive and fast-flowing river system has been throttled by dams that continue to threaten the river ecosystems. I’m not going to get all ‘environmentalist’ here, but a technology that allows for widely distributed power generation from other water currents provides yet another way to relibably go locally off-grid. Don’t have reliable solar at your Alaska cabin? I bet you’ve got a nearby stream or river…

What if --- really. What if we really could breach dams like Bonneville? Dams who’s PRIMARY reason for existence is power generation? It’s too much to target Hoover Dam or Hech Hechy, because they’ve been built to create water reserves, not power. Still, the more we’re able to decentralize the creation of electricity, the more we’ll be able to move away from the dinosaur power plants of the 20th Century.