Wave machines have had limited success because out in the open sea storm wave forces are huge. Harbour walls are costly to maintain so why not use wave machine to make an outer harbour and calm the wave forces. I realise that they would generate slightly less power than out in the open sea but they would still generate electricity for the port community.
The same could be done on the East coast using wave machines to calm down the wave forces and generate some electricity at the same time. This would have the double impact of reducing the rate of erosion of the East Coast of the UK.
Sunday 17 December 2006
Saturday 16 December 2006
Getting water from Scotland to London
Let's think of our railways in the UK in a new and different way. Let's turn them into utility highways.
What if the Railway lines became a utilities highway?
Much of our telephone network already uses phone lines that are part of our railway track system.
There is currently a big row about megapylons to get power from Inverness to Edinburgh. Funnily enough there is a railway line that goes from Inverness to Edinburgh that needs to be elctrified. Is it beyond British engineers ability to add some additional power cables to the gantries - no of course it isn't. The mega-pylons proposed could then be smaller pylons that cause less offence.
The idea gets better: The common thing between railways lines and water pipelines is they both avoid steep hills. We could lay a pipe alongside the railway track that links reservoirs from North to South of the country (and east to west). The same power cables that are in the overhead gantries can provide power to pumping stations to pump the water.
This would allow water to be pumped from reservoir to reservoir overnight and we could get water to the South East or anywhere there was a water shortage anytime we wanted.
Now that would be vision!
It requires our politicians to bring people together: National rail with the electricity companies and the water companies - and persuade them to cooperate with each other. We'd have truned the railways into a utilities distribution network - not just transport but water and power as well as telecommunications.
It could all be done for a tenth of the money wasted going to war in Iraq.
What if the Railway lines became a utilities highway?
Much of our telephone network already uses phone lines that are part of our railway track system.
There is currently a big row about megapylons to get power from Inverness to Edinburgh. Funnily enough there is a railway line that goes from Inverness to Edinburgh that needs to be elctrified. Is it beyond British engineers ability to add some additional power cables to the gantries - no of course it isn't. The mega-pylons proposed could then be smaller pylons that cause less offence.
The idea gets better: The common thing between railways lines and water pipelines is they both avoid steep hills. We could lay a pipe alongside the railway track that links reservoirs from North to South of the country (and east to west). The same power cables that are in the overhead gantries can provide power to pumping stations to pump the water.
This would allow water to be pumped from reservoir to reservoir overnight and we could get water to the South East or anywhere there was a water shortage anytime we wanted.
Now that would be vision!
It requires our politicians to bring people together: National rail with the electricity companies and the water companies - and persuade them to cooperate with each other. We'd have truned the railways into a utilities distribution network - not just transport but water and power as well as telecommunications.
It could all be done for a tenth of the money wasted going to war in Iraq.
Saving energy = 12V DC
All new houses in the UK should be built with both a 240V AC standard ring main* and a new 12V DC ring main.
Today our houses are full of transformers that are consuming power all the time and that are there to reduce the voltage to that required for the device. Even lights today come with transformers on them.
Our cars have 12V DC systems in them and we can run iPods, mobile phones, computers, televisions, lights and all sorts of equipment from them.
If we simply added a safety cover to the cigar lighter type of power fitting we see in cars so that they could be installed in houses then we could do away with large numbers of transformers and STOP wasting electricity.
MORE than this - small green power sources like solar cells, garden windmills, downpipe turbines have enormous difficulty generating 240V AC but 12V DC is easy and they can then be small and discrete power generators. They won't have to be large and ugly trying to generate a stupidly high voltage.
The market for local discrete power generating devices that supply a 12V DC system would blossom so we would save power generation at the national grid twice over: 1) We'd stop wasting it through transformers and 2) we'd generate some power for ourselves that was not dependent on the national grid at all.
What it needs is a political encouragement to builders to link them to suppliers and designers of 12V DC systems.
*I do realise that we no longer have 240V AC but rather power on the national grid in the UK is between 220V and 230V AC now but people here still talk about "240V" when talking about our ring main
Today our houses are full of transformers that are consuming power all the time and that are there to reduce the voltage to that required for the device. Even lights today come with transformers on them.
Our cars have 12V DC systems in them and we can run iPods, mobile phones, computers, televisions, lights and all sorts of equipment from them.
If we simply added a safety cover to the cigar lighter type of power fitting we see in cars so that they could be installed in houses then we could do away with large numbers of transformers and STOP wasting electricity.
MORE than this - small green power sources like solar cells, garden windmills, downpipe turbines have enormous difficulty generating 240V AC but 12V DC is easy and they can then be small and discrete power generators. They won't have to be large and ugly trying to generate a stupidly high voltage.
The market for local discrete power generating devices that supply a 12V DC system would blossom so we would save power generation at the national grid twice over: 1) We'd stop wasting it through transformers and 2) we'd generate some power for ourselves that was not dependent on the national grid at all.
What it needs is a political encouragement to builders to link them to suppliers and designers of 12V DC systems.
*I do realise that we no longer have 240V AC but rather power on the national grid in the UK is between 220V and 230V AC now but people here still talk about "240V" when talking about our ring main
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