14 DAY TRIAL // Researcher David Olinger, now working as a professor of mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, argues that it is possible to harvest more power from waves and currents by installing oversized kites at the bottom of the ocean.
The scientist maintains that, according to his investigations into the matter at hand, such kites would have an energy generating capacity roughly 64 times greater than that of undersea turbines.
The kites would work by harvesting the kinetic energy of waves and oceans, Inhabitat details.
More precisely, they would behave much like onshore wind turbines, only that, instead of tapping into the energy potential of air currents, they would produce electricity by harvesting the energy of the so-called liquid breezes at the bottom of the ocean.
“Unseen under the waves, winding along coastlines and streaming through underwater channels, there are countless ocean currents and tidal flows that bristle with kinetic energy,” researcher David Olinger explains.
“And just as wind turbines can convert moving air into electricity, there is the potential to transform these virtually untapped liquid ‘breezes’ into vast amounts of power,” he goes on to argue.
The professor says that the Florida Current alone, which flows from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean, has the potential to produce as much power as about a dozen nuclear plants.
“For example, it has been estimated that the potential power from the Florida Current, which flows from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean, is 20 gigawatts – equivalent to about 10 nuclear power plants,” he argues.
The National Science Foundation has agreed to offer the scientist a three-year, $300,000 (€222,644) grant to further investigate this innovative method to produce green energy. Should things go as planned, Professor David Olinger and his colleagues will begin work on a prototype for one such underwater kite this coming January.