The West Coast of Latin America,
Central America and North America is both an earthquake as well as
a volcanic zone. Despite the presence of these natural hazards,
potential exists whereby electric power may be generated from
ocean tides at several locations in this region. There have been
numerous proposals to install ocean tidal power conversion
technology at several sites along the Alaskan coast as well as
along the coast of British Columbia, Canada. As demand for
electric power increases in these regions, ocean tidal power
generation technology would likely begin to appear.
Possible Tidal Sites:
Central America has several relatively small bays and gulfs
where tidal power conversion technology may be installed. The list
would include:
- Gulf of Nicoya and Golfo Dulce on the coast of Costa Rica;
- Gulf of Fonseca on the coast of Honduras;
- Lake Maracaibo on the coast of Venezuela;
- Lago de Chiriqui and Bahia de San Miguel on the coast of
Panama.
At first glance, the Central American tidal power sites appear
to be too small to be worthwhile to for any future development.
However, new and evolving technological developments that are
occurring in fields that are related to engineering may offer the
opportunity to develop a powerful tidal power conversion
installation in Central America.
Building a Tidal Tunnel:
During the 19th century, a British engineer named Isambard
Kingdom Brunel pioneered a method to construct a tunnel under the
Thames River that flows through London. Over the decades since,
tunnel boring has evolved from being dependent on manual physical
labor to becoming more highly mechanized and progressively more
automated. The advances in modern tunnel building technology can
also be used to develop tidal power conversion on the Gulf of
Panama that is renowned for extended high tides that occasionally
exceed 20-feet and last for up to 20-hours. On the eastern side of
this gulf is the tiny Bahia de San Miguel where a north-south
geological fault line is suspected to passing beneath its
entrance.
Bahia de Caledonia is located on Panama's East Coast and the
tidal record shows this bay to in a virtual perpetual state of low
tide with tidal peaks reaching a height of 9-inches. The extended
high tide in Bahia de San Miguel rises to an average 8.7-feet
height and reaches a daily maximum of over 14-feet. It
occasionally reaches a peak height of 20-feet. An overland
distance of 33-miles separates the innermost points of Bahia de
Caledonia and Bahia de San Miguel. Channels may be excavated
inland for up to 4-miles from each bay and toward the other so as
to reduce the innermost overland distance between them to
25-miles.
At a future time, a tunnel of 50-feet in width and 75-feet in
height (arched roof) could be built under the land between the
proposed inlet channels of Bahia Caledonia and Bahia de San
Miguel. The arched tunnel roof would be below (low-tide) sea
level. The average height difference between the tides in the
2-bays is 8-feet. According the Bernoulli relationship (velocity =
square root of (2 x gravity x height)), this difference in height
would yield a water flow velocity in the tunnel of
22.698-feet/second in the tunnel with a cross section of
3480-square feet.
The power potential calculated from the flow speed, water
density and tunnel area (0.5 x density x area x velocity*3) would
yield a maximum potential of 1740-megawatts. If the power
conversion could be achieved at an efficiency of 81%, the tidal
power output would be 1400-Mw. Surface friction losses were
neglected due to a low friction factor. The hydraulic radius for
the tunnel is 228.5-ft and its wall roughness factor of 0.01
yields a low friction factor in the tunnel of f = 0.01/228.5 =
0.0000437.
Economic viability over the long term will determine if and
when a tunnel-based tidal power generation station is built in
Panama. Tunnel building technology is likely to evolve and improve
to make tunnel building more cost competitive in the future. The
tunnel approach offers an alternative to tidal power generation at
a few locations around the world where the tidal bays may be
small, where entrances to bays may be very deep or very wide. The
entrance to the Gulf of Panama has a depth of over 600-ft and is
some 120-miles in width. Bahia de San Miguel is a shallow and tiny
bay that has an extended high tide and a very brief low tide.
A tunnel built between Bahia de Caledonia and Bahia de San
Miguel could bypass that region's geological fault line. The
environmental impact of the tunnel would be little different to
that of the Suez Canal when it was first opened. The canal enabled
some species of oceanic life to swim between the Red Sea and
Mediterranean Sea and over the years that followed, the marine
ecology remained unchanged. A tidal tunnel built across Panama
that connects the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean would be
unlikely to affect marine ecology in the Caribbean Sea.
Energy Storage and the Panama Canal:
The future development of tidal power in Panama would require
technology could store large amounts of energy. One option to
store energy in Panama would be to use the Panama Canal. There is
scope to pump water in the canal to higher elevations if the
energy to do so became available. A tidal power station in Panama
would provide the power needed to pump water to higher elevations.
During low tide in Bahia de San Miguel, water that would be in
storage at higher elevations in the canal system may be allowed to
pass through hydroelectric installations and generate electric
power for the Panamanian market.
The tidal power station in Panama may be built with several
tunnels enough water may be available in Bahia de San Miguel
during high tide to support the operation of up to 5-tunnels
generating up to 7000-Mw of electric power. Some of the power may
be exported into neighboring countries like Costa Rica, Colombia,
Nicaragua, San Salvador, Honduras and Guatamala. These countries
have high elevations where water storage tanks may be built and
into which water to be pumped from lower elevations when the tide
is high at Bahia de San Miguel. A tidal power station built in
Panama would be able to support much future economic development
in Central America.
Conclusion:
The technology that can generate electric power from the
differences in tidal heights that occur across an isthmus is
presently being developed on a small scale at small islands. This
technology has potential for future development and will be able
to contribute to serving the future energy needs of many nations.
An ocean tidal power conversion system using a tunnel in Panama
could become a cost-effective method of generating electricity
from renewable sources in the future.
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Copyright 2005 CyberTech, Inc.
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