Given that it's underwater, my guess it that it's at least one order of magnitude more expensive than solar or wind.
It's not about the amount of energy available. There is "unlimited" energy all over the place, including under our feet. It's about how practical it is to transform it into something we can use.
I read an article about this recently. It's largelya chicken or egg thing. The economies of scale aren't there to reduce the build costs of tidal power plants. Likewise the process for permitting such plants and reviewing their environmental impact isn't well established. In essence every new tidal power plant is a pilot project.
I remember reading about wind power during the 1970s "Energy Crisis". It did't manage to get off the ground before OPEC lowered its prices and pulled the rug out of all those p
The generators tend to clog up. To your average lumps of seaweed and shellfish the structure looks like a nice handy rock with a decent current bringing plenty of food within reach.
Thousands of well spaced turbines are hard to target.
Their output converge to big copper cables that go to land, which are SPOF. Russia has been seen mapping the sea floor near offshore infrastructure of the North Sea just last week https://www.euronews.com/2023/... [euronews.com]
It can be Europe's power station, but it is also susceptible to Russian sabotage.
In fact, Russian ships with armed guards were mapping the locations of cables [bbc.com] recently ...
Given that it's underwater, my guess it that it's at least one order of magnitude more expensive than solar or wind.
It's not about the amount of energy available. There is "unlimited" energy all over the place, including under our feet. It's about how practical it is to transform it into something we can use.
I read an article about this recently. It's largelya chicken or egg thing. The economies of scale aren't there to reduce the build costs of tidal power plants. Likewise the process for permitting such plants and reviewing their environmental impact isn't well established. In essence every new tidal power plant is a pilot project.
I remember reading about wind power during the 1970s "Energy Crisis". It did't manage to get off the ground before OPEC lowered its prices and pulled the rug out of all those p
The generators tend to clog up. To your average lumps of seaweed and shellfish the structure looks like a nice handy rock with a decent current bringing plenty of food within reach.
Thousands of well spaced turbines are hard to target.
Their output converge to big copper cables that go to land, which are SPOF. Russia has been seen mapping the sea floor near offshore infrastructure of the North Sea just last week https://www.euronews.com/2023/... [euronews.com]