Man to Cross Pacific Ocean in Wave Powerd Boat
Can the waves power a boat? How do waves power a boat?
First the technology. Kenichi Horie a Japanese mariner has developed a way to harness the near endless power of waves in the ocean with his boat the SUNTORY Mermaid No. 2. The 69 year old adventurer and inventor uses foils, or simple wings, to produce dolphin like kicks while the boat rides waves.
I am not exactly sure how this works but what I think happens is that when the boat rides up a wave the foil is pushed downward, or resists the rising motion. Once the boat reaches the top of the wave the tension is let off the foil. A spring now snaps the foil back in place giving it a kick on the way down. After a few of these passive up, and resistant down motions, the boat develops momentum in the forward direction.
Clearly this is an experimental craft and the 4,500 mile journey from Hawaii to Japan is to show that it can be done. The vessel travels at a top speed of about 4-6 knots. Very slow, but if the doomsdayers have their way the the ice caps melt then maybe Earth will look a little like WaterWorld. The wave runner will have its day. Until then practical applications may be lost. Or will it?
Although impractical for boats that want to go faster than a painted turtle what about creating an energy source in the water? Wave action has been researched but technology like this has yet to be implemented. Using Horie’s foil technology on a platform, or possibly tethered to the ocean floor may create energy through a simple exchange of force. If what I understand to be true of the action of the propulsion system, the passive ride up the wave creates stored energy. By capturing this stored energy we should be able to create GREEN electricity.
Whoa there were a lot of complicated and big words in that last statement. Let me make it more simple. The wave already has energy. Using the foil technology developed for his boat may make it possible to convert the wave energy to electrical energy. Green electricity all around!
The thing that we can learn from this is that the earth has a lot of stored energy. A tremendous amount of energy has gone into the creation of the Earth. Actually an endless supply of energy (to us not in a physics sense) sits trapped and ready to get out of the Earth. We have not even been able to penetrate the crust of the earth yet. Wind generation is OK but that is just a small part of the energy that weather stores.
We have a lot of good creative people on Earth. Lets focus on tapping into some of this great energy. Come on people we need your help!
Sources: Suntory Mermaid EcoFuss Gas 2.0
If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.
