Solar and wave power solution: Fill the ocean with balls

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Designer Phil Pauley wants to coat our oceans with floating solar cell-covered balls. Their buoyancy could also make them viable as a wave-power system. It's purely conceptual at this stage, and with good reason: Until recently, wave power hasn't fared well as an alternative energy.

Anything that goes in the ocean is subject to immense forces (water being so much denser than air) plus "fouling," which is the inevitable accretion of biological material, from the microscopic on up to barnacles, that eventually encrusts most ocean-going debris so thoroughly that it eventually sinks.

So while these marine solar cells would probably be too high-maintenance to actually work, they're not completely outrageous. After all, even the Navy has figured out what appears to be a viable way to keep its ship hulls free of debris -- using a little robot.

straight to the source

• Floating Marine Solar Cells Harvest Energy from the Sun and Waves, Inhabitat

[Neonred 3,460]

Looks like a good project for our government to spend a few billion on with a company that is ready to go bankrupt.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

First you have to have balls. They need to be pretty big balls.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Looks like a good project for our government to spend a few billion on with a company that is ready to go bankrupt.

If they proposed to have the balls also shoot down ICBM from space you'd be humming a different tune. Drill, baby, drill and kill, baby, kill....what a mantra.

[Captain Oates 910]

There is 2 thousand miles of nothing behind my house. Nothing until you get to Chicago.

Putting solar on land is much,much, much cheaper, and there is LOTS of room

Wave energy is only for the queen at the moment because mechanical things need a lot of maintenance and the installation costs are huge. Transocean rents rigs out at $300,000 a day

11 million illegals pedaling generators - now that is practical and its 24/7 whatever the waves or the sun