Looks like BC Hydro has agreed to buy power from a future windfarm on Mount Hays.
Katabatic Power now has to go through the environmental assessment and other consultations.
katabaticpower.com/mthays.html
The company’s going to have an open house at the Crest on September 14th.
goddamn i gotta get in on that, that is my dream job to be the maintenance guy for that…
Awesome. I’ll have to try and make it to that one. Might be interesting.
Mike
everyone is missing the boat, every 12 hours the most powerful force on earth, the ocean is ebbin and a floodin every 12 hours on cue without missin a beat onn the north coast o. and if the japs could only harvest that energy weed all beee rich
gooooooooo tiiiiiiidaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll
pooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
just something to think about
Inventors started making the first tidal energy generators centuries ago. Many operated like dams, trapping water and then releasing it after the tides fell, but they were outmoded by steam engines and other more efficient fuel sources. A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity in high demand - energy. Right now, machines of various shapes and sizes are being tested from the North Sea to the Pacific to see how they capture energy from waves and tides. With high oil prices, dwindling fuel supplies and growing pressure to reduce global warming, governments and utilities have high hopes for tidal energy. The challenge lies in turning research into viable commercial enterprise, which for years has been elusive.
No one argues that generating energy from the oceans is preposterous. After all, the “fuel” is free, sustainable and the process generates no pollution or emissions. Moreover, it is not just oceans that could be tapped; the regular flow of tides in bodies of water linked to oceans holds promise, too.
Inventors started making the first tidal energy generators centuries ago. Many operated like dams, trapping water and then releasing it after the tides fell, but they were outmoded by steam engines and other more efficient fuel sources.
Ocean energy had a brief revival in the 1970s, when new machines were tested in Europe and China. But after oil prices fell in the 1990s, research and development financing also dried up, advances in wind turbines and other renewable energy elbowed out tidal projects and many governments put the projects on the back burner.
These days, though, growing attention is producing a wide range of prototypes, which are being tested. Wave power designs vary from machines that look like corks bobbing in the ocean to devices that resemble snakes pointing into waves. There are shoreline machines that cling, like limpets, to rocks.
Tidal power machines often come in the form of giant underwater turbines, which generate energy by spinning as tides move in and out; but some inventors are testing concrete-and-steel machines that lie on the seabed and pipe pressurized water back to the shore.
Even big commercial power companies are joining the movement. General Electric, Norsk Hydro of Norway and E.ON of Germany have recently pledged money for projects or investments in tiny marine energy companies.
“It is an untapped renewable energy source,” said Mark Huang, senior vice president for technology finance in General Electric’s media and communications business, which is financing marine projects. “There is nowhere to go but up.” He added that solar or wind energy should be viewed “as a case study” for the direction marine energy could take.
A handful of commercial projects are in the works, including the world’s first “wave farm,” as the fields of machines are known, recently installed off the northern coast of Portugal. A field of tidal turbines was also built offshore from Tromso, Norway.
Britain could generate as much as 20 percent of the electricity it needs from waves and tides, according to an estimate by the Carbon Trust, a group financed by the government. That is about 12,000 megawatts a day at current usage, three times what the largest British power plant produces now.
Britain has become a laboratory for ocean energy development. As the offshore oil business in the North Sea winds down with the shrinking reserves, governments are trying to transform the jobs into other ways of generating energy. The Scottish government has pledged to generate 18 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2010.
One research center in Newcastle is testing marine devices in a wave pool and another is putting them into the roiling ocean off the Orkneys, the low islands off northernmost Scotland.
If marine energy replaces the burning of some fossil fuels like coal, that could help reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions and possibly increase the “diversity and security” of energy supply, said John Spurgeon, a marine energy specialist in the Department of Trade and Industry in Britain.
Since 1999, the British government has committed over £25 million, or $46.7 million, to research and development and £50 million to commercialize that research, plus money to bring the energy into the electrical grid, he said.
No energy source is perfect, though, and marine energy developers are running into hurdles. While marine energy generators do not emit smoky pollutants or leave behind radioactive waste, these machines can be large and conspicuous. To draw energy from the ocean, they often need to be rooted on sea floors relatively close to shore, or mounted on to rocks on the shore - places that traditionally have not been used for energy generation. Therefore, inventors find that some of their biggest resistors are environmental groups.
Testing these devices properly will involve putting some of them where they are not wanted, a problem reminiscent of the battle to construct new turbines for wind energy.
Some leading environmental advocates say that the issue is part of a larger wrenching change being thrust on the green movement.
NEWCASTLE, England There is more riding the giant waves here than surfers, thanks to a growing number of scientists, engineers and investors.
A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity in high demand - energy. Right now, machines of various shapes and sizes are being tested from the North Sea to the Pacific to see how they capture energy from waves and tides.
The industry is still in its infancy, but it is gaining attention because of inventors like Dean Corren, who have lugged their wave and tidal prototypes around the world, even during the years when money and interest dried up.
“In the long run, this could become one of the most competitive sources of energy,” said Max Carcas, head of business development for Ocean Power Delivery of Edinburgh. His company manufactures a snakelike wave-energy machine the size of a passenger train, called the Pelamis, that generates energy by absorbing waves as it undulates on the ocean’s surface.
With high oil prices, dwindling fuel supplies and growing pressure to reduce global warming, governments and utilities have high hopes for tidal energy. The challenge lies in turning research into viable commercial enterprise, which for years has been elusive.
Astro
(without the spaces after the e)
my bad
So the wolves will have a hard time between the windfarms and the dump. Hopefully, they’ll move out of the area themselves instead of being shot.
LOL windfarms i think its cool about time, if you ask me. as for the other matter, wolves regardless of this pack will always be here. there is anouther pack 20 miles out of town there is 7 in that group. there making there way closer into town.