New technology harnessing wave energy could be the "holy grail" for providing electricity and drinking water to Australia's major cities, Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane said yesterday.
The technology, developed with the help of more than A$770 million (US$636 million) in seed funding from the government, works through fields of submerged buoys tethered to seabed pumps.
The buoys move in harmony with the motion of the passing waves, pumping pressurized seawater to shore to run turbines and pass through a desalination plant.
"The constancy of the waves even when the surface is dead calm means that you can build a base load renewable energy power station and that is really the holy grail for us, if you can produce renewable energy 24/7," Macfarlane told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Drought-ravaged Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth and the desalination of seawater is seen as one way of ensuring long-term water supplies for the big cities, which are all on the coast.
With the process requiring large amounts of energy, however, and the country also trying to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for global warming, the technology is seen as providing a double benefit.
The Perth-based Carnegie Corporation, which developed the seabed technology, informed the Australian stock exchange yesterday of its "proposal for a world-first base-load renewable energy power station and zero emission desalination plant."
After successful trials, the CETO system was on track to begin full scale deployment off southern capital cities in 2009, Carnegie managing director Michael Ottaviano said.
Australia was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the technology for both its power and water needs, he said.
All of Australia's southern mainland cities' current water needs could be satisfied by CETO units covering an area of 155 hectares of sea floor at around 75 percent of the price of current desalination projects, the statement said.
In addition, the "Wave Farms" would generate approximately 300 megawatts of zero-emission power, which would be enough to support approximately 300,000 households.
"If the project gets the go ahead this year, then we will be able to start construction in 2009, with full capacity achieved in 2012," Ottaviano said.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS