The underwater 'kites' generating electricity as they move | BBC News

rugged and remote the Pharaoh Islands are an isolated archipelago found in the North Atlantic powerful currents flow around its 18 islands and in this sea Channel called the vest Mana Sun mechanical creatures lurk beneath the water's surface called dragons designed by Swedish Marine energy firm minesto it's among a wave of new technology that hopes to revolutionize tidal power this huge yellow thing behind me is a tidal kite it looks a bit like a glider because it's designed to fly through the water and once it's installed on the seabed it will be generating electricity using the current that flows through this stretch of water weighing 28 tons and with a 12 M wingspan the newest dragon can deliver 1.2 megaw of power it's sort of like kite surfing but underwater so we tether it off to the seaf Flor foundation on the sea floor and then it flies in a figure of eight as underwater currents Flow by the kite's wings generate a hydrodynamic lift Force spinning the turbine and generating electricity this Design's very different to other types of tidle technology so what's the advantage of a design like this one we can install an operate and produce power in lowf flow currents with lightweight machines although it looks big to the eye this is actually a very small tidle turbine we've designed the system as such to be maintenance friendly and that you simply just told them in replace modules and then put them back in we've also over the years removed more and more components from the system and fit them on Shore instead the less components you have that can become damaged it's easier to access it and it's much cheaper also it's the gravitational pull of the moon and to some extent the sun which gives the tides their Rhythm and unlike wind solar or Hydro tidal power isn't reliant on weather while tidal bares have been around for decades their cost and the ecological impact has been a barrier now from the Scottish Island through to Canada a new generation of tech firms have introduced tidle St green turbines ocean energy is still largely untapped so what are the barriers that have prevented it from taking off it's a relatively small and new industry so very few machines in the water and then you have to compete with wind farms and solar PV Etc we're now addressing a resource that's so much larger so we're opening up a market that didn't even exist before if all goes to plan there could be arrays of subseed kites around the Pharaoh Islands installed in groups similar to wind farms so this machine here that's the first utility or the array device there will be many of these in Parks or array as you call them um around the world the Pharaohs aren't connected to any other country's power grid so it has to be self-sufficient and in the past it relied heavily on oil imports a f fa area now though it's going fully green and this battery station helps to regulate electricity Supply we have the biggest battery in I think in the Danish Kingdom we don't have any subsid cables to neighboring countries so we need to maintain the stability of the power system at all point in times on a millisecond level much of the country's power will come from wind hydro and solar but that's also where its experiment with tidal energy comes in it's predictable we know exactly when it's there 100 years ahead if we install title turbines in different spots we will have a base slow generation from tids and that is extremely valuable if we can unlock the potential it can really dramatically change the energy mix in the islands maybe 30 to 40% of the annual usage in the islands could be provided by by tights now this dragon has begun to fly and it's sending energy to the Grid it's just one machine but potentially a big leap forward for harnessing energy from all Seas [Music]

Channel: BBC News

Views: 252,822

Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world, america, usa, usa news, india news

Id: AbCIiUWhkd0

Length: 4min 52sec (292 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2024