River power - time for some sums

Just back from Budapest, where the Danube transects the city in a stately curve. It seems to run at a reasonable walking pace (this in June - faster in March/April, I'll bet), and must contain a fair slug of energy available for capture. Of course, this is exactly what Verdant are doing in New York at the moment.

The difference here is that Budapest has lots of lovely bridges, which could potentially act as foundations for tidal turbines (as Southampton University demonstrated at a small scale on Yarmouth Pier).

What the world needs now is some calculations on the possible power available from the Danube in Budapest. And once you've covered the Danube, there's the Rhine, the Rhone, the Volga, the Thames....

Pulse Generation - pulls the rabbit out of the hat

John Hutton, the BERR Minister today announced that it has granted planning permission for a £2 million 150 kW (yes, kW) device in the Humber.

This project has been in the offing for a couple of years. The Pulse Generation website talks about hoping to install a prototype in 2007, and the magical £878,000 BERR grant is mentioned even then. Clearly getting through the planning process has taken longer than Pulse had hoped.

On the upside, the technology is a novel reciprocating hydrofoil device (imagine two of the Engineering Business's Stingrays back to back) but with the generator above the waterline. The site looks interesting too, with a sheltered wave climate and probably quite nicely bi-directional flow.

So the population of devices in the water looks like it's getting larger again.