Simple wave power generates money

Free money! It’s all around us, practically pleading with us to put it to use generating electric power revenue. Never-ceasing megawatt waves pound the beaches day and night. It’s a simple matter to convert the periodic nature of the waves into electric power. Any one of a number of devices will do the trick. The idea is rather straightforward. A Simple Water Power unit as described in CoolScientist Lesson 30 (see, www.coolscience.info) is provided with a continuous supply of seawater that has been pumped by wave action to a height of 50 to 100 feet. So how do you do that? How do you turn waves into money? What’s the secret?

On Tinian Island is a natural blowhole that shoots seawater straight up into the air. It’s rather spectacular and delightful to watch. It’s also the key to turning the power of the sea into electric power. The idea is to manufacture an artificial blowhole designed to efficiently convert the periodic force of the incoming waves into a jet of water aimed as high in the air as possible. If ordinary waves can crash 50 or more feet up the side of a cliff, then a properly designed “Trichter” (or funnel) could direct wave-powered water into a raised catch-basin from which the water can flow back to the sea through a simple hydropower unit.

Trichters can be manufactured out of industrial plastic, installed, and weighted down to keep them in place. Several can be placed side by side so as to increase the amount of power captured by each one. The spectacular display of wave-forced water should put on quite a show. No doubt such an installation would become an interesting tourist attraction while supplying its owners with considerable income form the electricity thus produced.

Such CoolScience has another very interesting feature. Typically wave, water, solar, and wind power facilities are custom installations. That makes them expensive—often too expensive to compete with oil. However, when such equipment is designed to be easily mass manufactured, and is simple to install, then it becomes a revenue-generating product that provides its own income stream instead of feeding someone else’s. In other words, it’s like having your own non-polluting oil well.

Interesting thought, huh? Since everyone wants to make money, wouldn’t it be nice to have a machine that cranks out money day and night? Or even a whole fleet of them. Completed units generate electricity, which is sold to the local utility or directly to nearby customers, generating money for its investors. Around the world there are many potential customers for such products. What’s more, wouldn’t it be nice to be the manufacturer of those machines? Certainly, the best of all sales points is to sell a product that produces money for your customer rather than one that just costs money. Just think, Saipan could become the center of a new alternative energy industry.

Like the jet turbines, Trichters and other alternative energy equipment can be manufactured easily to become products that could be sold and installed around the world. Not only would they take care of a pressing local need for electricity, but would provide jobs to enhance the local economy, and even provide an additional tourist attraction both for entertainment, and as a focal point for those interested in applying practical alternative energy back home. In other words it would attract people with money looking to make money.

There are many interesting projects described on the CoolScience website, and in CoolScience publications. Subjects include Passive Annual Heat Storage, Improving the Design of Earth Shelters; Resonant Fields: The Fundamental Mechanism of Physics; Anticipating Terrorism; and How to Recycle Scrap Metal into Electricity. See www.coolscience.info. Click on Extraordinary E-books. The CoolScientist is also available for lectures at local schools, etc. Email us at coolscientist@rmrc.org. © 2005 by CoolScience