If you remember in Part 1, I set the table and server up the hors d’oeuvres, appetizer plates, and salads of harnessing Herricanes (If you don’t remember, STOP!  Go back and read Part 1 before continuing).  Now I will serve up heaps of real meat and continue the anger management presentation.

Waves, which seemed as big as skyscrapers and actually several times the height of the boats crashing down on the vessels, threatened to squash them all like cockroaches underneath Mother Nature’s shoe. Such power is just begging to be harnessed.

In fact, many companies including Lockheed Martin Corp. are developing utility-scale power-generation plants.  I am not talking about a couple of buoys in the ocean generating a few watts of electricity to power a light bulb of fan, but plants capable of generating power for cities.

A company named Pelamis has prototypes of what I call “Ocean Snakes” that are jointed mechanical snakes that bend in seas and generate electric power by pushing hydraulic fluid past turbines when their joints flex.  Imagine developing larger snakes that can function in 50-foot seas!

I can already hear your next question, gentle readers.  “Fred, hurricanes do not happen often enough to rely on them for power, so how do you address this?”

I have a solution for this also.  I am stealing someone’s science fiction idea:  heat generating sakes (if you remember the book, please let me know).  These mechanical monsters would be much larger than Pelamis’ prototypes and would generate huge amounts of heat when the flexed.

You might ask, so I’ll ask it now “What do heat generating snakes have to do with hurricanes?”  The Global Warming activists used to say rising temperatures feed the hurricanes and rising sea temperatures do this.  Localized changes in the sea temperature happen all the time globally, rising and falling with seasonal and longer periodic rates.  El Nino and La Nina are examples of this climatic change that have been around longer than man’s SUVs.

But, let’s just pretend that more hurricanes will result from Global warming; more hurricanes mean more electricity to meet our needs!          

Now, we just exploit what we know about making lots of hurricanes and activate these heat-generating snakes during hurricane season and use them to localize the hurricanes to places far away from land where possible and also use them to increase their fierceness.  In other words, use these snakes to make the hurricanes MAD!

Now, here is the ingenious part.  Combine all three (windmills, power snakes and heat snakes) and have them reinforce each other and create a synergy that will produce huge amounts of power.

Who knows?  Maybe this article will provide the catalyst for a group of companies to turn some cowboys loose and lasso this energy.

Kathryn Siranosian published a blog entry about Hurricane Rick and she got me to thinking.  While I believe it should be named Himmicane Rick and that has nothing to do with this article, hurricanes could be good for the energy business.

You may ask, “How so, Fred?  Don’t you remember Hurricane Katrina and the oil shortage and price increases?”  Yes I do and the loss to the oil supply was not even measurable as the oil companies knew it was coming and shut down the oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and secured the wells to reduce or even eliminate seepage.

The gasoline prices rose temporarily in response to speculators who expected the shortages and tried to make some money on it.  They lost as oil production resumed as normal a day after the hurricane left.

Now, as we all know, most herricanes are full of vitriolic, rancorous, and malicious anger, and are seemingly dedicated to the destruction of anyone or anything that gets in their way.  After a couple of unsuccessful marriages, I thought about trying to harness this power for the good of mankind, rather than its obliteration.

Kathryn states “Maximum sustained winds remain near 180 mph, with higher gusts. While fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next 24 hours, Rick is expected to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane for the next day or two.”

WOW!  Just think of the electricity that could be generated by windmill farms based in the areas that hurricanes inhabit.  Just think of hundreds or even tens of thousands of windmills churning out megawatts of power with 180 mile per hour winds.

In fact, they do not need to be based there all year around.  Take them into dry-dock for maintenance during the off-season and tow them back to sea just before the start of the hurricane season.

Let’s see, how could we harness the hurricane even better?  AHA!  I remember several episodes on the Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel and the crab boats with their crabby captains (we now know that crabs got their name from the captains of the boats that fish for them) fighting for their lives during a hurricane on the Bering Sea.

In Part 2, I will provide even more methods of capturing hurricanes and harnessing their power.

Slow motion tsunami

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a  tsunami watch for the Hawaiian Islands. You can read the details of the regional warnings, watches, and advisories here.

As a result, the city of  Honolulu has activated its Emergency Operations Center.

The epicentre of the quake was located 120 miles (190 km) southwest of American Samoa, a remote Pacific island, and measured 8.0 magnitude, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The earthquake caused waves in Pago Pago that were 5.1 feet (1.57 metres) above normal sea level.

An official of the US National Park Service said that there have been deaths in American Samoa, but the number of casualties remains unclear. Reuters is also reporting that the National Park of American Samoa visitors center and its offices are completely destroyed.

Image courtesy of Orin Zebest

The wave farm, which is the first of its kind in the world, consists of three Wave Energy Converters that can generate a total of 2.25MW of energy.

The extended metal contraptions dip up and down with the waves while the internal pistons attached to the sea bed remain stationary and pump hydraulic fluid which in turn runs the electric generators producing energy that is brought ashore by underwater electric cables providing power to 1,500 homes.

If a large scale installation of these orange giants is carried out around all the oceans of the world, who knows, we might be able to fight the crisis of our fast-dying power resources. – via Dvice