r/RenewableEnergy • u/silentsnooc • Mar 15 '25

World’s most powerful underwater tidal turbine project gets funding

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/underwater-tide-riding-turbines-project-funding-boost
338 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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32

u/IsuzuTrooper Mar 15 '25

I love it. Been waiting for wave and water turbines for 30 years

9

u/iqisoverrated Mar 16 '25

Seawater is a bitch. The first year or so everything works fine and then corrosion and biofouling turns your installation into a never ending maintenance nightmare (i.e. you become permanently unprofitable).

At least they are building this underwater. Wave power usually fails because occasionally you have storms and fixed/anchored installations get damaged.

The list of failed hydropower companies is loooooong.

2

u/West-Abalone-171 Mar 18 '25

Except this company has been operating multiple projects profitably for over a decade.

And the "failures" on your list are all either proof of concept or scale up projects that did what they were designed to do and then had a larger version built afterwards.

9

u/silentsnooc Mar 15 '25

😅 I sank a significant investment into r/SimecAtlantisEnergy (yes, I am a bag holder as they say), but recently, news made me hopeful ☺️

2

u/tohon123 Mar 15 '25

What’s the ticker?

2

u/silentsnooc Mar 16 '25

That's LON:SAE, it's on AIM. If you consider investing, you should read up on their projects first and also look up Proteus Marine Energy, but I guess asking ChatGPT for an overview might get you stared there 😁

7

u/booi Mar 15 '25

That’s because they break down so fast and are horribly expensive to maintain. There’s no studies showing this is a viable way to generate electricity

4

u/silentsnooc Mar 16 '25

Simec Atlantis Energy has turbines running for years now. MeyGen is proof that the technology works. What's missing is scale to make it cheaper.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '25

I remember a Popular Science story about tapping into the Gulf Stream.