Inventor Lance McMullen has a beautiful house on Douglas Island. But he spends almost all of his time in the garage.
McMullen isn’t the only one who’s excited. McMullen is starting smaller. His company, Sitkana, makes small tidal generators that are perfect for individual fishing boats and liveaboards. He hopes they can revolutionize ocean power the way rooftop panels revolutionized solar power. Because water is so dense, ocean power could be more potent than wind energy. And because tides are consistent and predictable, energy drawn from them could be more reliable than solar, which fluctuates with the weather and the seasons.“If tidal power was the cheapest form of energy, it would be as ubiquitous as a solar panel,” Polagye said.
“It was that summer I started sketching designs,” McMullen said. “But I realized I had no idea what they were or if I could make them work. I didn’t know anything about fluids or mechanical engineering.” “It swims through the water sort of like a fish,” McMullen said. “And installing these is no different than dropping an anchor.”
So a family might need multiple generators. But at just over $1,000 per kilowatt hour, the cost of energy is relatively low — comparableMcMullen poses with scraps of plastic from failed prototypes in May 2024.
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Fuente: cleantechnica - 🏆 565. / 51 Leer más »