WAVE AND TIDAL POWER

About 3 of 4 part of the earth is covered by the seas and oceans. The large amount of water flows around the world carrying large amount of energy. That water movement names tide and it is enormous energy source in the world. The tide effect is caused by relation between the Sun, the Earth and the Moons gravitation and take a place twice per day, thus the tides are predictable and regular. Those parameters caused that the electrician has started to interest how to extract the energy from tides. At present engineers all over the world providing researches about tidal and wave energetic. Although the extraction of tidal energy is not profitable for all coasts however if the height difference between full and ebb tide is large enough (minimum 4m) then the tidal power plant become profitable and competitive to conventional power plants. The Bay of Fundy in Canada is the place with the highest tidal movement about 17 meters (annual average 10.8 meters). Unfortunately most of the tidal power plants on the word are only demonstrated and experimental projects. Only a few power plants are commercialised. The major advantages of tidal energy are: tides are more predictable that wind and solar, the energy production is reliable, once built power plant generate no additional operation costs (excluding maintenance costs). Generally that type of power plant has only two but intense disadvantages: the range of location and the negative environmental impact on the wide range. Nevertheless the seas and oceans carry one more type of energy: the wave energy. Large masses of air moves upon the water surface creating the waves. The size of wave depends from the wind velocity, the seabed bathymetry and the oceanic currents. Therefore wave power depends from wave high, length, width, velocity and from water density. Also in that case the engineers started to construct the devices to wave energy extractions. But this is relatively new and there are only experimental power plants. In the EU potential penetration of wave technologies is from 5 to 10 GW in 2020 and from 10 to 16 GW in 2030. [9], [28], [29], [32], [35]

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