12-10-2008, 05:32 AM
karsen wrote:
Anyone have inside information about proposed underwater turbines they've discussed putting in the Gulf Stream? Supposedly they could power the entire eastern seaboard.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...d=16713781
It takes at least a decade for that kind of tech to get refined through small-scale testing and then start workign its way into regular use. Those things can do some serious ecological damage, so it's worth waiting to get it right.
CETO might be the better tech to pin hopes on. It's a wave-power technology that's completed small-scale testing in Australia, powering a desalinization plant. A larger facility is due to go online in 2011 and should supply energy to homes. There's talk of supplying 10% of Australia's power demands with wave power within the next 2 decades.