When I was a kid I used to love to fly kites with my family. Even as an adult and father I still love flying kites with my kids when we go on vacation to the beach in the Summer.
Everyone knows you can only fly kites in the sky, right?
Not any more.
A company from Sweden named Minesto has designed and developed an underwater turbine named Dragon 12 that behaves like a kite underwater in order to harness the power of the ocean’s tides.
Minesto’s Dracon 12 promises to cut the cost of generating energy from tidal flows, and is already up-and-running with a demonstration pilot off the coast of Denmark’s Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland. Why there, you might be wondering? Well, it turns out the channel between these land masses offers a funnel that tidal currents flow through that accelerates the water significantly enabling it to generate more electricity.
The tidal pull of the moon could unlock one of the greatest sources of renewable energy known to mankind, if we don’t mind getting a little wet to harness it.
28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid