Turn Ocean Current into electric current

Scuba dive along the Florida Keys and you will notice a gentle pull of the Gulf Stream, always flowing Northeast.  In fact the Gulf of Mexico is slightly higher than the Atlantic sea level. The Keys block flow like rocks in a stream.  Tides come and go, but the Gulf flow is smooth and steady, and full of life.

At the very end of the earth- the very tip of the Key’s island chain- is Dry Tortugas. Key West is 100+ miles from Florida; Tortugas is another 70 miles west of Key West.  Cuba is only 90 miles as the missile flies, but southerly.

If you jump into the unprotected waters off Garden Key, home of Fort Jefferson, you would be carried along by the Gulf Stream at a 5 knot clip.  That’s just the surface.  All that water is also flowing, massive volumes of rich ocean water form the North Atlantic Elevator which carries warm water past Cape Cod and all the way to Europe.

Let’s drop some ocean turbines directly in-line with that current.  In a recently proposal to the National Park Service I proposed exactly that for Dry Tortugas. The proposal was submitted on October 3, 2008 and contained the idea in general terms.  That’s exactly what I read in the Wall Street Journal today. Everybody Into the Ocean. The current is strong and electrical demand is not great; duty quarters for park service personnel and power for the ferry from Key West.  It would make the park totally free of fossil fuel. I thought it was appropriate test ground; pristine ecosystem we need to preserve, and a pretty cool fort.

My hometown in New England was on a river that generated electric power for the city. Excess power is sold to the power grid and customers get a hydro-credit on their electric bill each month. Entire factories were operating on power derived from the passing river.  In New York City East River turbines are generating power.  Nature produces more power than we could ever use.  Geo-thermal, ocean current, wind and solar are produced naturally but difficult to predict and expensive to share.

Ocean current may be the exception.  Unlike wind or solar, ocean current is steady and we don’t have to drill to the Earth or, no mater how calculated, guess.  Waves may present more challenge. I’m not debating wave-generated technology, but rivers flow. The Gulf Stream flow would supply the power of several nuclear power plants! Let’s deploy a field of underwater turbines in the core of the Gulf Stream. Is it practical to plop a couple down and see what happens? Nothing is that simple, of course.  My point is the river is working for my home town, the Ocean current will always flow within a few miles of the entire eastern seaboard. Within that massive volume is power. But not just from flow.

The Gulf Stream transports about 1.4 petawatts of heat, equivalent to 100 times the world energy demand. Research is underway to tap this power in a couple different ways.  Ocean thermal energy could also be harnessed to produce electricity, utilizing the temperature difference between cold deep water and warm surface water.^[18]

Caring is Sharing ~ bookmark us!

Tags: clean-energy, green, new source of power, ocean, science