How can Tidal Power be improved?

Question

How can Tidal Power be improved?

Answer 1

IMO, there isn't a lot one can do. With tidal power, the amount of incoming energy depends on water level difference, area of catchment. Utilization comes from whatever machinery (turbines) uses it for energy consumption. You can try to increase the input by enlarging the area of catchment, in real world scenarios, I don't there is a whole lot we can do. You can get better turbines and engineer better placement and etc., but the hydro turbines are pretty efficienct, as they are.

Answer 2

Tidal power has a lot of limitations. As the other poster mentioned. One big limitation is that the tides do not happen all that often. Since they are tide to the moon they also do not happen at the most convenient time of day. You would want to capture at high tide and release at low giving you the best head height but what if low tide was at 3AM? At 3AM the utilities already have their units backed all the way down and are looking to get rid of excess power without having to shut units off so tide power has a lot of issues. I really like the new ocean wave worms that are being developed in Europe. If they can prefect those that might be a good technology.