A child at play knows intuitively that floating on a raft in the surf has a lot of forceful movement. But the same child also knows that when you stand in the surf and get hit by a big wave it'll knock you over! The point is, that water weighs 63lbs per cubic foot, air weighs....well almost nothing. The available forces from these masses moving horizontally, is a tremendous natural energy not yet captured on an industrial scale.

Many of the current electricity-from-ocean-wave designs, deploy "the raft floating in the surf" solution. They call them "Wave Buoys". Have you seen those flashlights at the convenience store that when you shake them they lite up?  These systems work under the same principle.  The movement of a magnet across a copper wound coil generates an electrical current. The following are a few examples of the way it works.

AWS Ocean Energy - The Archimedes Wave Swing is a submerged air-filled cylinger with a "floater" that rises and falls as the waves pass above, whose movement relative to the fixed sea floor is converted to 1MW of electricty by a linear geneator. 

The Ocean Navitas solution is alledged to be more efficient than existing wave generation, fossil fuel and wind turbine technologies. With its 93% conversion efficiency, it has been calculated to produce 1Mwh at a cost of 2.8 cents per kilowatt in coastal applications.

 The Trident Energy solution works much the same way with a linear generator.

There are many different designs from varying universites and corporations, and the intent is to install "farms" of these Wave Bouys. Obviously, the more power producing units you have, the better. But once again, this device works on the vertical linear function of electro-magnetism. The smaller vertical wave movement reduces the available forces. As compared to a horizontal laminar flow, the output capacity of these devices in our opinion is less than optimum, and the shear number of wave buoys required for measureable power reduces the feasability as a standard form of power generation from tidal forces. 

Another psueo Wave bouys design is the Pelis Wave Energy Design that generates electricity by converting the motion of the ocean waves to connectors fitted with coils and magnets. As the tubes flex in the waves they rock the magnets and coils to produce power.  The idea is that an entire "farm" of these tubes floating on the surface can yield substantial amounts of power. At the time of the writing we believe that an actual contract has been made between the country of Portugal and Pelis for a farm off the western coast. This is a massive example of the Wave Buoy even thought the coils are horizontal, the same theory applies. Hopefully Portugal will benefit from their ocean based power generation selection. We feel that the esthetics of a farm like this bobbing across the horizon has its issues.

The Limpet is an intriguing way of catching wave force at the shore. A concrete, collector is embedded along a rocky shoreline where there is an abundance of wave activity.  As seawater rushes into the collector, air is forced up through its chamber into two turbo-generators.  The force of the air through the turbines turn a generator, creating electricity, which theoretically is sent to the grid. Aside from the limitation of being "shorebound", the programmable logic controllers to determine pressure direction, and vane axial rotational schemes, its probably works reasonably well.

More familiar, due to the current Wind Farms on land, the underwater propeller seems like a natural transition. This design captures the horizontal laminar flow of water tides and also lends itself to a "farm" of propellers much like its land based cousins. Apparently, the larger propellers, as seen here,  have actually been installed in the United Kingdom with some success.  Forces acting on these large machines require large roller bearings to take the massive forces, and even though not publicized have known issues with crushed bearings and maintenance issues.

The farms as illustrated below shows how the initial towers are driven into the seabed and these blade systems are raised and dropped via an archemedian screw system.

Propellers typically were designed for airplanes. Air is 833 times less dense than water so the theory of the deflection of water force off of a blade in order to force a rotational movement of the generator is functional. Aerodynamics is different that Aquadynamics however, and we feel that the physics of propellers through a principle of deflection, underutilizes the potential force of the horizontal laminar tides.

We feel that the same amount of Square Area that the propellers uses, placed in a perpendicular angle to the tide creates a direct blunt force rather than a deflective one, and consequently generates much more power. Additionally, aside from the bearing forces on these single axle devices, combined with the inherent moments of inertia applied to the vertical towers, somewhat diminish their feasibility in practice. The open props in the water must surely be having an impact on the aquatic life.

As mentioned, we contend that the true force comes from the force generated from the horizontal forces including ocean waves. This design form S.D.E. Energy Ltd. in Isreal is more along that line. They make the Sea Wave Power Plant. It uses sea wave energy to produce electricity aledgedly economically and in an enviromentally freindly manner. They claim that they can generate electricity for 2 cents per Kwh--nearly half os what coal or natural gas power plants can produce it for. Basically, the buoys are placed in the breakwater and they move up and down, according tho the frequency of the waves.  The buoys' movements press a hydraulic liquid, which is regulated by systems that convert the energy to circular systems that operate an electric generator. This design captures the force of the water, but the slapping on the beach has esthetic issues, the shoreline limitations make real estate an issue, and we wouldn't want to listen to the noise.

And last but not least, and one of our favorites is the Gorlov Helical Turbine. It has many of the same properties that the Wilton Water Wheel has relative to the maximum and minimum resistance concept. Its twisted "blades" in essence present a blade flat against the flow or an on-edge angle against the flow. 

Also this design had no moving parts which is ideal. Our response is that given the total cubic volume of each device is constant, the Gorlov Helical Turbine has about a 25% facial area in the stream, whereas the WIlton Water Wheel is near 50%. For the 25% increase in efficiency, our simple blades compete well. The GHT is an admireable design.

There are a number of thought provoking ideas that attempt to harness the power of tidal and wave forces for electrical power generation. Yet it's the cost/benefit factors and the feasibility of the design, in real application(s), that are of importance. Some take over the ocean as far as the eye can see, some have great propeller turbines, and some just make simple sense. 

Our Tidal Cubes provide for an efficient, effective, simple yet elegant solution for generating electrical energy from tidal forces. It is an easy to install system due to its four pylons and flexible transfer systems, not to mention that its the most evironmentally sensitive device in the water today. Our kits are comprised of standard parts and materials and industry best practices, and initiate a standard methodology for extracting energy from the natural flow of water across Oceans, Bay, Deltas or Rivers.