The Taproot of the New Blue Economy
The World’s First Energy Efficient Proprietary “Hydro-Electric Energy Grid”
I have a grave concern with the current direction that the renewable energy industry is taking. Headliner technologies like wind and solar are giving the industry a bad name. Even hydroelectric dams, which were once seen as the “anchor-man” in the energy tug-of-war, are proving to be poor performers. In addition, the storage technologies, without which most renewable concepts cannot be viable, are ridden with issues.
What issues are we talking about? So-called “green” energy isn’t green, clean, or socially responsible. The norms of what most perceive around what renewable energy is and its purpose for being are largely flawed.
Solar panels are one of the least efficient power producers in existence. They leach toxic chemicals into the ground water with age and while they capture the sun’s rays, they in effect rob the Earth of natural radiation. To operate at the utility level, they gobble up hundreds of square miles. Imagine covering your entire county with a big carport that kills all ground vegetation for lack of sunlight, leaving you a dustbowl.
Wind power is not much better, and perhaps somewhat more efficient; however the environmental impacts are just as profound. The nearly 4 million pounds of concrete and the 10 miles of steel reinforcing bar in each individual foundation alone forms a solid block the size of a small house. The fiber epoxy composite blades are hundreds of feet in length, not recyclable, subject to wear, tear, fatigue and lightning strikes, needing replacement regularly, and already piling up in landfills with no means of decomposition. These are some of the dirtiest building materials, and this is to only name a few.
Operationally, these machines pose numerous threats to nearby communities and wildlife. Loosely recorded, it’s stated as responsible for nearly half a million deaths annually of airborne wildlife, destruction of habitats, and creation of low vibration noise and altering of wind patterns. Could global warming be due in part to these structures stealing the cooling breezes of our planet?
Hydroelectric power, an apparent leader in energy provision, thought to be both economical and sustainable, brings its own threats and complications through the use of immense retention dams and expansive reservoirs. The atmospheric impacts alone are significant. Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels, whether due to the manufacture and use of millions of tons of reinforced concrete, the impact to local habitats for miles of roads, tunnels and hundreds of acres of excavation, or the off-gassing of methane due to the rotting of submerged vegetation.
The socioeconomic threats that hydroelectric dams can impose are stunning to say the least. A case in point is the Three Gorges Dam in China. A tsunami-like wave from a breach would spell death for 100 million people, displace over 400 million residents, and wipe out millions of acres of farmland, imposing risk of famine-like conditions for 20% of the world’s population. Anyone living in vicinity of these structures, regardless of their size, faces these threats. Currently, hydroelectric stations exist in at least 34 of the 50 states in the U.S.
There are numerous environmental consequences of damming water. These consequences include flooding, which is responsible for many deaths and destruction of entire populated areas, croplands etc., creating massive reservoirs, changing water flow, blocking the natural course of rivers, and constructing power lines and roads. Dams create a lack of water and are sensitive to droughts, which have a serious impact on how much hydropower can be produced. Reservoirs slow and broaden rivers, making them warmer, depleting water flowing downstream of oxygen, and harming many aquatic animals.
From 1912 through 2018, 1,578 dams have been removed in the U.S., where 900 dams were removed between 1990 and 2015. Dam removal restores fish passage and access to habitat, eliminates safety hazards, and reduces future liability for owners and surrounding communities.
In spite of the growing power demand and desire for energy independence, government agencies are not only withholding permits for new development, but many are maturing plans, at a rate of 50–60 per year, for hydroelectric dam removal, leaving such systems without scope for expansion of present capacity outside of pumped storage returning us to the same hazards created by dams.
Given the intermittency of energy source, renewable technologies without a companion storage solution are largely useless for servicing the grid. Systems utilizing batteries of various forms are dependent upon use of conflict materials, ores and minerals sourced by inhumane methods, enslaving tens of thousands, if not millions of children and families for their extraction and processing, or ionic flow power storage systems circulating toxic liquid mixtures in high volumes. These factors would suggest that there is merit to hydroelectric dam systems in their ability to effect integral energy storage in form of the reservoir. However, the downside of these conventional reservoir systems, as noted above, is lack of conservation of space and impacts to the environment due to human-made alteration of riverine systems, or artificial ponds. There is just no such thing as a “free lunch,” one is only left with a choice of the lesser of evils.
The issues surrounding the meeting of needs for energy in our society are ridden with complications. The multi-lemma involving public health, safety, economic subsistence and environmental responsibility involves trade-offs of “somewhat good” for “bad,” or better for worse or just…“meh.”
To frame the present circumstances, the economic impacts of faltering oil and gas prices have left both a technical and an executive workforce wanting for a new avenue that employs their energy expertise. Growing public concern over the state of the environment and management of natural and human resources has led major corporations to quantify and demonstrate their value in social and environmental performance metrics. Therefore, it is recognized that a paradigm shift is required in energy development to bring socioeconomic revitalization and environmental sustainability to an actuality (total removal of polluting systems).
In this spirit, energy companies are following a trend to “green” themselves by diversifying their portfolios to include renewable energy technologies. Unfortunately, as laid out above, the majority of these avenues do not embody responsibly sourced materials, do not justify their own carbon footprint, nor will they deliver the objectives as advertised by their proponents. So, what you end up with is pollutant and non-pollutant products produced by polluting products — how in any form is this saving our environment? For example, peaking plants using natural gas or diesel to support wind and solar deficiencies in capacity, or electric batteries produced from conflict materials mined, moved and distributed by fossil fuels as back-ups. So “green” is not clean, it’s dirty; only an image of clean is seen through marketing.
The threat is that it will soon become clear that the present tack of the renewable industry, namely in the forms of wind, thermal/solar power and solar, is to present themselves as “feasible and favorable,” but in reality they are playing the “loss leader” and being a tax shelter, letting energy companies take advantage of investment tax credits, behind the façade of the “Green New Deal.” The real intent is to risk balance energy investment portfolios, which are actually driven by oil & gas profits.
At the current pace and in the present direction, renewable energy in these forms will, over time, be seen to fail. Oil and gas will resume its place as the dominant source of global energy. The end perception will be that renewable energy was played as a steppingstone, or a distraction to further embed the hydrocarbon element of the global energy mix as a mainstay in the planet’s energy consumption. Or, the worst-case scenario would be that nuclear energy emerges as the “hero,” which ironically is the greatest villain of all, with the filth of its fuel granting the planet the curse of unmanageable deadly waste. Whether by intent or coincidence, the outcome of such a realization doesn’t in any form bode well for the reputation of the energy industry overall, in the awakened eyes of the public consumer. The expectations that have been created of what these new renewable industries can bring to the U.S. will not be sustainable, rendering the vision of a “green tomorrow” to nothing but another broken promise.
There is an alternative path that brings the best of renewable energy technology options, offers inherent storage capability, is deployable at gigawatt utility scale and offers baseload quality power and water. A fossil-free and clean step up to today’s systems whereby “you can have your cake and eat it too!”
This dam-free technology, the SeaDog Wave Energy Carousel, which derives hydropower from ocean energy, employs the proven, simple and conventional electro-mechanical turbine equipment for power generation, proven by centuries of use. The SeaDog System comes without the space claim of dams and without the fear and possible destruction of hundreds of feet of water looming over developers’ heads. These systems foster the creation of life and marine ecosystems. These basic displacement structures play in the waves, forming habitats that will attract sightseers, sport anglers, marine biologists and recreational divers.
These eco-friendly systems employ local, responsibly sourced raw materials, which are long-life, easily maintained, environmentally passive, and compatible and fully recyclable/reclaimable. Given the proprietary pressurized liquid grid water pipeline architecture, energy is stored within the system, using non-toxic natural media. Deployed upon the seabed offshore and along existing pipeline and utility corridors onshore, these energy transmission and distribution systems are cold, safe and out of sight, giving minimum environmental impact and no community threat. They won’t overload, create sparks, start forest fires or explode if accidently impacted.
The SeaDog Wave Energy Carousel Systems can be configured to deliver from single gigawatts to hundreds of GW’s of grid active/on-demand energy along with integrated storage. These systems with their usable stored energy or flowing power have the added versatility and functionality of creating desalination, a value-added benefit. Another feature of this system allows the pressurized transmission lines to be branch-able and stepped down to capillary supplies to drive kW-class, localized micro-hydro systems. The overall liquid grid system proprietary concept embraces the full spectrum, catering to industrial applications right down to residential use, all from the same offshore array and common source of ocean energy. These systems provide a new and effective “Energy Transmission and Distribution Grid.”
Taking the State of Maine as a case in point, which has an annual power consumption of 11.6 TWh, they have to import nearly 25% of their power from Canada and nearly two-thirds of Maine households use fuel oil for heating; three of the top four sources of energy are natural gas, fuel oil and gasoline. If using offshore wind to meet their power needs, it would require well over 300 wind turbines covering over 300 square miles of the ocean and employing hundreds of miles of high voltage cable. Or in terms of solar panels, would cover about 120 square miles of territory.
Understanding the applications of these technologies with such dimensions reveals that these are not viable options, not good for the environment, wildlife populations, the American public or third world laborers. Using a SeaDog Wave Energy Carousel System for the same purpose would require only a 2 to 20 square mile array, depending on differing sea states, of SeaDog Wave Carousels, and would provide for the annual needs of the entire state. The system would deliver its power to shore in pressurized water pipelines, either entering the existing electrical power transmission and distribution infrastructure via an onshore turbine house at the seaside, or transmitting and distributing hydropower to cities and communities via pressurized water pipelines in a range of diameters for localized power utilization.
In summary, these systems when built offer the ability to displace not only offshore wind, but solar, coal and diesel fired power plants, as these standard offshore array configurations have power ratings on the same scale as the top U.S. power plants.
The offshore deployments of the SeaDog Wave Energy Carousel System offer deployment several times more quickly due to design simplicity, while providing a better promise of economic growth through job creation at a much faster rate, bringing a sustainable method of power generation, and offering opportunity and employment to produce freshwater through desalination in abundance, while maintaining balance with the environment and creating long-term posterity for the U.S. coastal regions, taking the form of an offshore liquid power grid spanning the east coast of the U.S.
The opening chapter in this new saga of “Dam-Free Hydroelectric Wave Energy,” along with the first step, connection to the “Proprietary Hydro-Grid,” will be accomplished with the deployment of the first square mile array installed off the Eastern Seaboard. The array’s primary delivery pipeline will be direct to the shore, but with a north-south facing tee, ready for tie-in to the next array, the next customer, and the new generation of hydropower distribution for the coastal states spanning Maine to Miami and beyond.
Given a choice to change course, while maintaining the “clean” objectives through a shift in technology focus that offers the ability to keep promises to society and support the coastal states in their renewable portfolio targets, the question is how many gigawatts of power and thousands of tons of freshwater do you want to deliver using these new hydro-driven products? Now is the time to take this opportunity to engage, deploy, and be the leader in making positive change a reality, before the “jig is up” on offshore wind, solar and other forms of fossil fuels.
Transform your understanding about this “Dam-Free Hydroelectric Power and its Proprietary Grid” through the corporate information provided on Diamond Infrastructure Development Inc.’s website, and learn how to participate or become a part of the team providing this new wave of offshore renewable energy, or for independent licensing opportunities related to SeaDog Systems themselves. Experience a truly clean and dynamic energy delivery system!
For more information visit: http://diamondinfrastructuredevelopment.com/ or feel free to call Georg Engelmann, CEO/President (832) 929–7907.
