Anyone living near an ocean can attest to it’s amazing power. What if we could harness that almost infinite source of power? Well now we can, and it’s being done through tidal energy. However like any energy source, there are tidal energy pros and cons to consider.
Here are some tidal energy cons. Typical water based electrical systems require water to rotate large turbines in order to produce energy. While the amount of water the ocean has is not a problem, the problem is that the speed and force that it applied on these turbines is quite small without the help of gravity. So the amount of energy is spread over a large area, rather than a specific narrow passage such as in a river.
One way around this conundrum is to create dams which allow water to pass through when the tide is rising and then to let the water drop on the ocean side of the dam, thus creating a potential energy difference between the dammed water and the ocean. The water then forced by gravity is quickly funneled past the turbines in the same way as it would in a river.
However there is another con of tidal energy and that is that salt water is corrosive and makes for maintenance of these dams to be quite high and labor intensive.
The advantages and pros of tidal power are quite easy to see. It’s basically unlimited as the tides are influenced by the moon which will be around for billions of years. It’s predictable and reliable as we know how much the water will rise in a certain area. It’s also widely available very few countries of the world are landlocked and as such almost everyone would be able to use this energy source if we could tap into it.
