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by the Green Tribune. This website is dedicated to everything GREEN, and
green means eco-friendly. Topics include everything from renewable water
energy to alternative fuel sources. We all need to be thinking about how
we can save our planet’s resources, and come up with solutions to preserve
the Earth for our childrens’ children.
Featured Article: Buoy
Parks are the Wave of the Future
In
this decade of energy conservation awareness, alternate forms of
power generation are being invented and implemented at an
ever-increasing rate. One of the proposed ideas
for supplying large amounts of power to metropolitan areas is to use
buoy parks to generate wave energy. These buoy
parks, which are currently being considered for various offshore
areas around the world, could supply enough energy to power
thousands of homes each. Some estimates claim that wave power could
meet the energy needs of the entire world using less than one
percent of the available ocean resources. In fact, buoy parks would
be a great energy alternative for areas that don’t have access to
an electrical grid.
A
typical buoy park might hold around 200 large buoys, and cover
roughly two square miles of the ocean surface. The
average buoy would extend about 15 feet above the water, and each
buoy could provide power to ten or twenty homes. An alternate type
of buoy would be moored to the ocean floor, perhaps 30 to 40 feet
below the surface or even deeper. Of all of the
potential sites for buoy parks in the world, the western United
States coastline seems to offer the most powerful waves with the
least obstacles or restrictions to proposed buoy parks. Specifically,
Oregon offers a desirable combination of powerful waves, accessible
ocean floors, and a community that seems to embrace “green”
energy ideas.
Buoy
parks are being developed in different ways around the world.
Researchers at Oregon State University are working on a buoy
that uses copper wire and magnets to produce electricity.
The magnets would use the ocean’s current and waves to move
through the coil, which would generate about 250 kilowatts of
electricity per buoy. The developers say that the
buoys would be “contact-free”, in other words, no parts would
come in contact with other buoy parts. This
should provide a sustainable, constant source of power without the
corrosion that one might expect from a dynamic object that resides
in the ocean.
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