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Power your Tesla with ocean energy by Tidal Sails

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Hi, arriving San Francisco on 11. Feb to present Tidal Sails in Silicon Valley at the Venture Summit West. By combining alpine ropeway technology with ocean sailing, clean electricity can be produced from slow moving tidal and ocean currents at a very low cost primarily due to the huge exposed area in the energy stream, high efficiency and low weight. Tidal Sails is as game changing to ocean energy as Tesla is in the automotive industry. Interested in taking a part to enable fueling the Tesla with clean electricity from the ocean, please get in touch! Best regards Are Borgesen, +4790168686 Tidal Sails AS (Expect my S sig perf. to be delivered in Norway very soon;-)
 
Haven't seen anything like this before. Interesting approach. I did look through your presentation online. Sorry if this seems like a dumb question but your slides show a yield of 1kW per sq meter for a 3 knot current. In your demo with the large yellow device, it looks like you have about 35 sq meters of area but got 20 kW in what looks like a current that is faster than 3 knots. Seems like greater than 35 kW should have been seen in this demo. No?
 
Very cool idea. Could this concept be adapted in a more linear form for river stream flows? With the ecologic impacts of hydroelectric dams making them undesirable. This seems like potentially a lower impact solution with the continuous power output potential of hydro power. It really seems like something ideally suited to the US Pacific North West.
 
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Haven't seen anything like this before. Interesting approach. I did look through your presentation online. Sorry if this seems like a dumb question but your slides show a yield of 1kW per sq meter for a 3 knot current. In your demo with the large yellow device, it looks like you have about 35 sq meters of area but got 20 kW in what looks like a current that is faster than 3 knots. Seems like greater than 35 kW should have been seen in this demo. No?

Hi, sorry for late reply... The exposed area into the current on the yellow prototype is 2 x 5 meter, and the current speed is ca 4knots=2kW per sqm;-)

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Very cool idea. Could this concept be adapted in a more linear form for river stream flows? With the ecologic impacts of hydroelectric dams making them undesirable. This seems like potentially a lower impact solution with the continuous power output potential of hydro power. It really seems like something ideally suited to the US Pacific North West.

Hi, sorry also to you for late reply.. Tidal Sails most certainly could exploit river streams with a high energy extraction compared to other solutions. However, the combined flow of all global river streams are less than the flow of just one of Canada´s 2000 tidal currents. (Minas Passage, Bay of Fundy)
 
@tidalsails

The idea of getting energy from the sea is good. But do you think that a normal person could fuel his Model S with such energy like he does with a solar panel system installed on his roof?
I mean is it possible to install a private Tidal Sails system in the sea? :confused:
 
I am frustrated here, as I cannot understand the concept. When I think of energy (wind) and a sail, I think of a force moving on an area - the sail - and the resultant transfer of energy causes that sail (and its boat) to move.

Well and good.

Now, though, your website's show suggests an entire bank of sails, along a triangle, and a line/rope that apparently drives a turbine to produce electricity. But for the life of me I haven't been able to understand how the water's flow is translated into usable moving energy. I'd love to learn more.....
 
I am frustrated here, as I cannot understand the concept. When I think of energy (wind) and a sail, I think of a force moving on an area - the sail - and the resultant transfer of energy causes that sail (and its boat) to move.

Well and good.

Now, though, your website's show suggests an entire bank of sails, along a triangle, and a line/rope that apparently drives a turbine to produce electricity. But for the life of me I haven't been able to understand how the water's flow is translated into usable moving energy. I'd love to learn more.....

Sail underwater works like sail in the air, is the basic idea. Convert the force on the sails into a motion of belts and then a dynamo.
 
Yes, the devil is in the details. I guess 2kW per square meter of the working face, in a four knot current, is a decent output; and tidal currents are reliable, if intermittent. 500 sq meters to produce a megawatt is a very big machine, and the moving parts are complex.

I'd like to OP to explain whether this approach has any inherent advantages over a shrouded turbine, as used by most hydro stations I know of. Something to do with low-speed flow?