You are the founder of a start-up company that extracts electrical energy from ocean waves, a process

Question:

You are the founder of a start-up company that extracts electrical energy from ocean waves, a process called WaveGen. Your basic technology is a tube anchored vertically to the ocean floor. The unit is installed close to shore so that the bottom is anchored to the seabed and the top is above the water surface. At the top of the unit is a turbine generator for creating electricity. Waves rise and fall in the tube like a piston going up and down. As a wave rises in the tube, it pushes the air above it up into the generator. As the wave falls, air from the atmosphere flows into the tube through holes drilled in the part of the tube that is not under water. The average change in vertical wave height is \(2.00 \mathrm{~m}\), and the waves repeat on average every \(5.00 \mathrm{~s}\). A nearby seaside town requires \(0.500 \mathrm{MW}\), and your goal is to supply all this electrical power. You know that the WaveGen tubes can be made economically up to a diameter of \(2.00 \mathrm{~m}\) and that the efficiency of the generator in converting wave power to electricity is \(68.0 \%\), and you can produce a few tubes per day.

Fantastic news! We've Found the answer you've been seeking!

Step by Step Answer:

Related Book For  book-img-for-question
Question Posted: