What is Tidal Energy?
Tidal Energy is a renewable energy source. It is produced with the ocean waters surge in and out with tides. For most tidal energy generators, turbines are placed in tidal streams. A tidal stream is a fast-flowing body of water created by tides. A turbine is a machine that takes energy from a flow of fluid. The tidal energy is much more powerful than wind energy, because of their different density. Unlike wind, tides are predictable and stable.
knowledge deepening
I haven't found much informations for the real use of tidal energy, thats because it is not very much used. In switzerland you can't find tidal energy systems because we don't have a sea and its tides. The next tidal power station is found in france on the estuary of the rance river. Tidal energy has grown worldwide in the last few years because of companies, which invested in tidal energy projects. Researchers see tremendous potential and predict a major growth in the next decade. The tidal market is expected to grow around 10% in the period from 2017-2024. Because it is invented in 2007, there are not much new technical improvements or development. There are just a few obstacles for that energy source. A big problem is the price, you need to have very much capital to build a tidal energy system. Another obstacle is also the dependence on mother nature, you need a suitable site where tidal streams are consistently strong.
Examples:
1. In the United States, there are legal concerns about underwater land ownership and environmental impact. Investors are not enthusiastic about tidal energy because there is not a strong guarantee that it will make money or benefit consumers.
2. There are currently three different ways to get tidal energy: tidal streams,barrages and tidal lagoons.
Quiz Question:
Where was the first tidal energy system constructed?
A - 2010 in America
B - 2005 in Germany
C - 2007 in Ireland
Vocabulary:
surge - sudden, strong movement forward
Tides - water level that has risen as a result of the moon's gravitational pull on the Earth.
density - how big is something, how many molecules does it have
source: Tidal energy, 2015 - (National Geographic.org)
The development of Tidal Energy, 2019 (lagersmit.com)
By Devin and Marco
For my Post i took the energy consumption of a toaster which is used 5 minutes a day as an example. A toaster needs 0.074 kwH per day if it is used 5 minutes a day. This makes 7 Francs in a year. The power consumption is about 900 Watts.
How many kwH will a toaster use per year?
We are heating our rooms with a renewable energy source. We have a geothermal Probe.
A geothermal probe is large pipe which goes under the earth. We take the heat out of the inner of our earth.
How does it work?
We are putting cold water into the pipe, the water goes trough the whole pipe and gets heated up at the bottom of the pipe trough the geothermal. The Water circulates through this pipe and so we can heaten our house for free an unlimited.
I couldnt take a picture of our geothermal probe because it is hidden under the floor.
We had the idea that farmers could use drones to fertilize their fields instead of using big co2 emitting tractors. They can also share their drones. Using drones to fertilize saves a lot of co2 and also time and fuel. The farmers just have to charge their drones but that is still more economically friendlier than the use of tractors.
A plan to reach our goal is to convince at first one farmer to try our idea and like that we can spread our fertilizing method, if it works.
Per year the co2 Emission of These tractors is about 865 Million tons, so with our method we could save a lot of co2. Also all the fuel which is used for the tractors can be used otherwise.
Diego and Marco
Airplane Food Facts
This article is about the food on airplanes. The different airlines which offer food on their flights, have to consider about many important parts like the freshness, the loss of vitamins and minerals or the sustainability and the seasonality of the food.
Chicken Consumption
This article is about a man in Grüningen with a chicken farm. He has about 20'000 chicken on his farm and has to deal with a lot of work everyday. I found it very interesting that he eats 2 times a day chicken.
The nest exploring the future of buildings
This article is about a project of the enterprise EMPA. They make researches to build a house which are good for the environment and very modern. They use Solar energy and the house has active asisted living another part is also the recycling which they involve in their project.
These articles are very interesting and i chose them because these future buildings and the airplane food fascinates me. I knew on first sight which articles i want to read.