Verdant Power has been testing the use of underwater turbines in New York's East River for the past few weeks, with the goal of adding hundreds or even thousands of turbines to help address the city's power needs.
There's just one minor problem - the current is so powerful that the turbines are snapping like twigs. While the turbines have been temporarily removed, Verdant is hopeful that a redesign will allow for greater power generation with fewer malfunctions.
Link [NYTimes] via Gothamist
Here in Ulster County many of us have Central Hudson Electric and Gas, but they are unaware that this company is the very one which in Court established "Personhood" for corporations..!
That was a black day for each and every American and it's gone down hill ever since..!
We must as a nation Nationalize all Energy the Electric companies and also the Oil Industry until we do this there will be no solution for our current economic, environmental, and political problems..!
By doing this we could cut energy costs in America by 30-33% and also have from oil alone %60 billion each year every year for this type of alternative energy development and exploration the energy infrastructure so much even perhaps eventually Fusion..
New engine designs and development and this is also a true National Security issue and requirement for the future..!
Remember the Oil companies are not in the business of putting themselves out of business..!
We could also have the money to develop true really clean coal with all these billions coming into such efforts as well as cut costs by 30%, thus create an economic Boom that would benefit every American across the board..!
There's more to this but it's time to start talking it up..!
Straight talk from Sid.
Well, you may not be a civil engineer, but the issues involved don't pertain to civil engineering anyhow... it's Mechanical Engineering or Aeronautical Engineering, ME's fluid mechanics-heavy brother. The turbine design resembles a wind turbine because the goals are similar. Air and water are BOTH fluids (fluid liquid).
The design is more influenced by the expected tip speed and available real estate. On a boat, the propshaft turns very very fast (much too fast for a big diameter prop) and available real estate under the boat is limited anyhow. The situation is different with these guys. Also, efficiency is much more important here than with a typical propellor design as well (big slow turbines can be very efficient). Furthermore, these guys can be optimized to have a much more narrow band of operation. A boat prop, by its nature, will see a greater variation in its rotational speed.
Don't lose sleep over this ... Something tells me that the people who design these things use some high powered computational fluids dynamics modeling packages to get the design pretty good.