Tacoma, Washington has decided that for now, pursuing renewable energy from the Tacoma Narrows just isn’t cost effective. Bill Gaines, the Tacoma Public Utilities Director, said that the door isn’t closing on tidal-technology, but instead the state is going to focus on more short-term solutions to meet the state’s renewable energy mandate. The reason the Tacoma Narrows isn’t producing as much energy as a normal tidal ocean, is because the current is only fast enough to drive turbines about 20% of the time. (Amsdam) The energy created would cost about 50% more than the original estimate.
Te Electric Power Research Institute in California estimated that it would cost about $103 million to build a tidal generation system big enough to power 11,000 homes. After the Tacoma study, Scott Amsden, the tidal project manager, said that instead of continuing personal experiments they will instead observe other European and Canadian studies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment