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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions power by wave energy. I could not tell from the article if this is real or hypothetical. It sounds like a good idea but I have not heard anything about this. That is a constant source of naturally occurring kinetic energy. I did find the following on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

As a Texan I heard a lot about potentially tapping wind energy from floating turbines off the Galveston coast but have not heard about this in practice while the wind farms in west Texas are exploding in volume.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas

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Wave power has been a pipedream since the 1970s; the problem is that water is too powerful and tends to destroy structures over time. As well as being corrosive and full of living things that cause "fouling". It's also not been very well funded.

Offshore wind turbines on the other hand are practically a mature technology, while getting larger and larger over time (improves efficiency). There's loads around the UK, although mostly fixed rather than floating. Floating is a less mature technology.

Perhaps it would work better in estuaries, with clean(er) river/fresh water. The ecological impact may be prohibitive, but as an engineering task it seems easier.

Extracting tidal power from estuaries is another similar pipe dream - people have been discussing building one in the Severn estuary for as long as I have been alive.

Tide power is intermittent but extremely predictable and not tied to the diurnal cycle, which would be advantages.

They've been successfully extracting power from the Rance estuary for over half a century.

The trouble with estuaries is that in addition to the ecosystem damage and change to flood dynamics associated with hydro power in general, they also tend to be used for ships to navigate, so getting a scheme which suits everyone is a major challenge.

Yes, there is so much untapped potential for wind and solar that at the current time it's pretty much pointless to spend R&D on unproven technology. We don't have the time to develop new methods for energy generation before we need to be mostly carbon neutral. For the same reason it doesn't make much sense to fund next-gen nuclear power. It just takes too long.

Perhaps the floating bit is the hold up. Extremely destructive hurricanes are a nearly annual occurrence in that area so the turbines must not be fixed and must be able to right themselves vertically after severe wind/waves. Otherwise they are not worth the investment.

There are converters at coast lines that are reality and being tested/used.[0] There are plans to install converters at the bottom of the sea to collect wave energy, but if my memory serves correct, there were concerns that this would slow down processes in the ocean and might lead to problems in its ecosystem.

[0]: https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/blogs/wave-energy-resea...

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