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Humanity is obsessed with the sea. Maybe it’s because it’s an environment that we’re simply not meant to survive in, like space. Or, maybe it’s because we feel small when we look at it from the coastline. But the one undeniable thing about the ocean is that it’s powerful – much more powerful than any one person.
That all sounds pretty poetic, but humanity might soon benefit from the vast power of the ocean by harnessing it with a new device called the Triton, and with over 332,519,000 cubic miles (that’s 1,385,999,652.41 cubic kilometres) of ocean water, you can bet there’s a lot of energy moving around out there in the form of waves.
To harness all that potential energy, researchers from Oscilla Power – a US-based renewable energy company – came up with a device that contains a series of generators and floats on top of the ocean’s surface. The whole thing is kept in place by underwater cables.
“As waves interact with the device, there is an alternating magnetic polarity created in the metal that is used to generate electricity,” reports Meagan Parrish for ChemInfo.
The team explains that the Triton will not use any moving parts to collect energy, which makes it perfect for ocean use where waves will undoubtedly knock it all over the place.
In fact, the researchers are counting on it moving, because that’s basically how it generates power. As they put it, energy is captured “by the use of flexible tethers, themselves enabled by an asymmetric heave plate, Triton uniquely captures energy from heave, pitch, sway and roll motions”.
More at ScienceAlert.com