hello and welcome to technology update with demand so worrying and resources limited the sun could be setting on an outdated era of global energy simply put new alternatives to invoke alternative sources or the best bet going forward energy directly from the sun is often the first thing that comes to mind when people mention solar power however when you really think about it the sun's responsible for far more than just fueling solar panels wind farms are an indirect result of

the sun's rays as convection currents drive global air streams and create the majority of gusts on the globe. and in fact there'd be no plants or trees to make biofuels from if there was no sun to spur on photosynthesis in the first place. as those plants die off and decompose thermal heat and pressure slowly turns those into fossil fuels like coal and oil however there is one source of energy that has no apparent connection to the sun instead the moon is to think for the motion of the ocean that we know as the tides of proximity exerts a much stronger influence than the sun. as the moon circles the globe the water closest to it gets pulled out words especially at the equator there's also a smaller bulge on the other side as the solid earth is literally pulled away from the oceans furthest from the moon when the sun moon and earth are aligned we get the strongest tides and if you're in the right place at the right time the moon even provides enough energy to sir. incoming water.

turtle nature of the power. and the idea of using the tides for humans purposes has been around for ages hundred years ago enterprising engineers constructed flour mills powered by the daily. people have looked to harness the tide for electricity generation in the twentieth century a number of projects around the globe were proposed but were decried as economic madness for a time it looked as if the proponents of title power were fighting a losing battle but in one nine hundred sixty three the rance river estuary in brittany france was blocked off to start construction on what would be the first industrial sized power station in the world in the process of one and a half million cubic meters of water were displaced for seventy five construction site. twenty four turbines have a capacity of two hundred forty megawatts to this very day but the hefty price tag

dampen enthusiasm for such plants in the country but that didn't deter others who knew could be done better and more cheaply. today and. around the world where it's possible to construct a good. i think it's safe to say. that was the driving force behind the.

thirty eight when he was. he had already contemplated the idea of a power station. and this means while working. he travelled. home which is remarkable for the shores. despite the fact that it's up in the arctic circle more months it was already a well established and thriving port in the one nine hundred sixty s. . the industrial might for innovative engineering projects like baby. because of the many. fluctuations in the water level as the tide rushes are more pronounced than otherwise would be the views can be breathtaking for the last

ice age having stripped away the top layer sediment leaving mostly exposed. water. purposes the most ideal spot for the world's second title power plant was here. because it's. connected directly to the via an especially outlet compared with a concurrent competing project in france. much less invasive site prep was required. there was absolutely nothing like it nothing people thought were going about it. there was no way you can build a tidal power plant like you can and. perhaps the most important breakthrough was a revolutionary method of construction. entire power house. greatly reduced environmental damage like that scene in france. the climate proved to be

another potential obstacle. we had to find a concrete composition that would survive such severe winters. and we managed to make create. that we had invented we developed. that is the core of the entire facility. so once the construction was complete they simply attach

a joint pontoon filled the dock with water and tugs the whole complex to the chosen site along the way they took the opportunity to monitor how the structure fared in rough seas in total the trip from more months to measured just a hair under one hundred kilometers. an hour triumph. he had done this before everything went over well he took us one day to transport the planes. mounted to the underwater foundation this was a great success and once we had done it we get universal recognition. in the decade since those accomplishments have withstood the test of time and have been adopted the world over the floating method has become an industry staple project engineers everywhere cut costs by as much as up to fifty percent and the station itself has also held up well against father time no power house operated its entire useful life without problems or substance of repair and when engineers tested the state in

the two thousand they found that the walls of the structure were in great shape even after nearly forty years of constant freezing and thawing of the arctic frigid waters. at the center of this russian engineering feat a french hard turbine with rotatable propellers was the most complex and most expensive part of the power plant it could generate electricity as the tide came in with water rushing into the blocked off day as well as in reverse thanks to the special made blade system however most of agree that it's often better to just use in one direction because as the water rushes back out to sea it operates at ninety percent efficiency but only fifty percent in the other direction. we bought. us. from france it was a. good but also very complex and expensive one of the units was equipped with a french german and the other one was left empty forty five years ago we had hoped

that we would eventually make a turban. and so we did it is an orthogonal turban. based on what's called a turbine and uses blade shape similar to airplane we. can vary in depends on the speed of the water. of which way the water flows in the turbine spins in the same direction with no significant change in efficiency and after being tested out for a few years and eventually found its way into a brand new title power plant that was being added onto the existing structure. to produce a new turbine and powerhouse hydro turned to one of russia's leading ship in submarine makers and a testament to the relative simplicity of the new voter system the whole complex complete with turbine generators was constructed in around six months as a factory just outside of the white city of hunger and in two thousand and six

following as much fanfare that would normally accompany the launch of a new ocean liner the floating power plant made its maiden final voyage to. and just like the original it was towed on pontoons into the bay instead of tearing down the existing structure they left it in place and simply attached. to the face of it which by the way had been made a monument to russian science and technology. outfitted with new digital equipment the original control room still remains the hub of human activities here surprisingly simple an actual operation. power plant can be. no more than just a few workers. need. any machine. which can

be mounted. in the process of converting. tricity is rather straightforward as well get the turbine spinning it operates pretty much like all other power generation plants out there because of the. vertical. turbine. to create electricity. construction. the past year one and a half. power. plant . produced so too was the generator.

here engineers relied on a tried and true manufacturer to construct probably the second most important part of the station. electro machine building factory as one of the country's top makers of generators. including those special built for small and medium sized hydro electricity plants and then all of that experience prepping for the tidal power plant. the fact that it has to be floated out. particular challenges for design engineers. in the region of fifty to sixty tons these generators are far more likely to. face to face with water. engineers decided. to trance. energy from the vertical shaft to a horizontal one but whatever the arrangement. the generator is only as useful as a turbine below that power is a really good. turbans were also developed and tested in canada in

japan. best they were able to achieve an efficiency factor of thirty eight percent . so they gave up working on such projects and with you know with both and we picked it up we changed the blades as well as the section to. end today we are too busy fissions the factor is as high as eighty two percent are going to go with that is that some thirty eight percent to eighty two. he wants as a result from our design is more energy efficient than the french turban which was considered the classical type instance of this. culture is that so much different each musician to find it more when living in a tricky and dangerous neighborhood this is one big lesson on space the

assassination of the country's top security official and the political. what will change when america picks its president amid muslim rage working the iran tight rope pushing china and russia as occupy anger spreads the two parties still dictate will there be. no selection close guy every day to center fifty artsy. more news today in harlem says once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day.

it took years if not decades to get that turbine just right but now with that in hand institute of energy structures is ready for the next challenge to the next logical stage. where is will need to. downsize you have a totally different scale course and require a different approach. to the plant with three year olds to a bind the generators capacities for megawatts the roller is five meters in diameter and the bleed. design in the waters of the box on the barents sea the seven northern tidal power station requires

a roughly two kilometer long dam to create an enclosed basin measuring five point seven square kilometers the power house itself will be equipped with a trio of new triple decker turbines. however given that the power. structure. by using the. project. three fold. crashes into. the rising forces inside the.

electricity. heat. and the turbine and creating tricity. bunched together to create more powerful. perhaps most interesting. blocks of. previously simple concrete retaining walls. at the institute. this is the. pressure of. the air rushes through a pressure air duct and into the. this is exactly the kind of turbine there will be installed on the new. power plant scientific research institute of energy structure just finished developing. term minus connected.

there are sensors installed here including pressure sensors angular rate sensors and turbine air speed sensors. their readings enable us to evaluate a turbine's performance. we have an analysis center that collects all these data and studies them to find patterns and correlations. here's where the incoming data get analyzed. even the temperature of various parts of the construction. they can monitor how the turbine performs under various conditions different speeds or alternating flows one thing they've noticed is that because the turbine spins in the same direction regardless of the flow it's ideal for use in the water column in which the direction of. of course there are other kinds of energy converters out there but these engineers are confident that they're designed for something other simply. some power plants are shaped like

a snake but that's naik often gets carried away by the current. the installation is too heavy complex and difficult to secure with all the joints that serve to generate electricity. there are also hydraulic turbines. but their design is way too intricate and leaves something to be desired. there are floating power stations but they also get carried away if there's. a large humanities. first we came up with a concept of an orthogonal turbine and then we successfully applied it in designing a way for our planet. and the ground work for including such wave columns in future projects has already gotten started this past year alone hydro built a prototype up and. it will produce electricity for the local grid as well as give

the engineers back at the institute precious data to improve the next generation of ocean energy snatchers. could help. power plants be useful in dealing with an inevitable drop tidal electricity stations. this is. ok proceeding. because they're. doing so. somewhat ironically even. a huge amount of electricity. and there's nothing. to counteract that.

since the tide only comes in and out twice a day all of its potential energy has to be harnessed in short bursts without this and other peaks there's another type of hydro plant out there this one requires an artificial lake but relies on the natural power of gravity. pumped storage plants. energy right. the one. hundred meters of. water drives the turbines electricity generated. demand for energy. take advantage of lower prices and pump the water back into the upper reservoir more often than not these plants are switched on to handle peaks in electricity demand in the morning and evening. they can also be used in tandem with plants for balanced approach to energy. and we are now at the

pumped storage power station the first of its kind in russia. turbines each with a capacity of two hundred megawatts of generation mode and two hundred twenty megawatts and pumping about it was designed to regulate the energy balance in moscow region and neighboring areas in central russia the power plant was built back in the one nine hundred eighty s. in the one nine hundred ninety s. it did reach design to capacity in two thousand but is currently operates at full power. this practice pumped storage power stations are normally placed in a mountainous areas with a greater water pressure european part of russia doesn't have the kind of terrain however still managed to set up a fairly efficient facility in spite of an average incline of around one hundred. stations efficiency is seventy four percent of all of you quit and here at the station is russian made including its turbines manufactured by power machines and its engine generator is produced by the general electric heavy engineering plant that's also part of the individual capacity of each turbine two hundred megawatts

is quite powerful a few pumped storage power plants in the world can boast that. as you just heard the workhorse of the whole plant is made by a company called power machines located in st petersburg they specialize in big powerful equipment like this giant ship propeller. storage are being constructed at the company's metal factory which has been in operation for over one hundred fifty years over the decades is churned out around twenty seven hundred turbines with a total combined capacity of over three hundred gigawatts. the factories making four bi directional turbines each of which can crank out two hundred ten megawatts those new turbines are needed because at present in moscow region there's a pressing need for new capacity. as a result loose hydro is pushing ahead with the second phase here that. it's ok to

seven hundred fifty meters south of the existing facility design work started in two thousand and seven. and the first. two thousand and eight is one of the biggest construction projects in russia at the moment something like sixty million cubic meters of earth to be moved it's approaching the suez canal like for fortune's the new expansion comes with a price tag of just over two billion dollars. this gives us a perfect overview of the current state of the construction site really. we can see how far along. in terms of completion of. the water ducts measure a seven and a half meters in diameter are made out of twenty individual sections the rebars welded together before their hold over to the main construction site or concrete is eventually for in the end two hundred thirty six cubic metres of water it will be able to burst through the pipes every second similar foreign facilities have chosen to use. a water pipe made of metal and is prone to such but when we were

designing our. we considered employing such metal and even an underground conduit but in the end. economic and safety factors we decided to may not be the cheapest in comparison to. one hundred percent. according to roos hydrous plants the first two turbines will be in place by the end of two thousand and twelve while the third is slated for next year in the fourth in two thousand and fourteen and that really can't come soon enough with analysts saying that moscow region alone could use an additional one and a half of spare capacity in fact in order to get the added waters are quickly as possible the structure of the messenger later the main part is taking place around the clock with five thousand people employed in three shifts the generators will boost existing capacity by eight hundred forty megawatts one will reach that powerhouse by travelling eight hundred pipes the new. cubic meter pool is being

built right next to the existing. one end of the. lower reservoir rather than build an entirely new one will be the fourth largest pump storage place in the world achieve you it's obvious that if russia should make use of its immense potential for tidal power generation and put it into practice then pumped storage power plants would definitely come in handy particularly to compensate for tidal plants natural cyclical posturing like we. know together or separately these technologies are under likely to say all of society's needs for electricity but they could soon play a growing role in completing the overall energy picture especially by adding stability to sometimes unreliable sources like solar and wind the most important of all the some of the greenest methods of power generation out there and interestingly enough perhaps the only ones that don't depend on the sun in one way or the other only time will tell if there ever become more than just a nice chef occasion but that'll do it for this edition of technology update will

see you next time and until then enjoy the ride. over a decade north of boston terrorist attack. ex hostages blunders into their lives after the tragedy. still gives try to cross out the past. because their future will yet be written.

if. what lies ahead for occupy movements mobilize calls for a new america who stands for the ninety nine percent us election is close god monday the twenty ninth.