Tidal Power - Wales style

The Times Online (British) reported that a deep-water energy farm would be installed off the coast of South Wales by 2010.

The program will cost an estimated 10 million ponds (20,800,000 bucks) and will place a series of underwater turbines in seas of over 100 feet deep – this way they won’t interfere with shipping routes.

Good for South Wales. While we here in New York are conducting experiments in the Hudson River to see if turbines can power a Gristedes supermarket (see The Turning Tides entry) the Brits (or is it Welsh?) are investing 20 million bucks in green energy that will some day power 5,000 homes.

What?

All that money and work for 5,000 houses? That only makes sense if each place is running 20 space heaters and 20 air conditioners 24 hours a day. It’s pretty tough installing anything in 100 feet of salt water – have you ever tried to touch the bottom of a swimming pool? Plus, with the corrosive nature of seawater, who knows how often the big spinning wheels will need to be replaced?

But I’m sure that this is just the trial run and that as time passes, the grid will extend to a few more communities (and for 20 million hopefully the rest of Wales). This could be a great experiment and hopefully the rest of the world is watching. The Times wrote that unnamed studies estimate that the UK could someday power 5% of households with this clean green energy source – saving over 2 billion dollars (about 1 billion pounds) a year in the process.

As for our own Gristedes experiment – I heard that the beer is warm and that all the ice cream is melting in the freezers. Then again it is a Gristedes…