Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Wormhole energy

There is talk about using solar power in Australia to heat air make it rise and thus drive turbines.

Could you use wave power in a similar way. Think of the wormhole on the Inis Mor Aran island waves at the base crash into it and force air up the shaft of the hole. The wormhole is a handball alley sized shaft of about 12 m by 6 m. Say the average wave is a metre high and you get 12 a minute. So you have 70m^3 of air moving backwards and forwards constantly. This should be a lot easier then building a solar power tower as the tower part is already made by nature.
There are not that many wormholes like this around but there are plenty of cliffs. Could you use a cliff to make up one side of the tower and rig the other side of the tower off the cliff? The main problem with wave power is the force is so strong as to wreck everything. A strong see can pick up boulders and throw them through your machines. A system such as this avoids this problem by putting the turbines far away from the sea.
Using cliffs to turn waves to wind to power could it work?

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