tidal

5 Articles

Build A 3D Printed Tide Clock So You Know When The Sea Is Coming To Get You

October 3, 2025 by 8 Comments

The tides! Such a unique thing, because on Earth, we don’t just have oceans full of liquid water—we also have a big ol’ moon called Moon to pull them around. You might like to keep track of the tides; if so, this tide clock from [rabbitcreek] could come in handy.

The motions of the tides are moderately complex; it was in the late 19th century that Sir William Thomson figured out a reasonable method to predict the tides mathematically and with a mechanical contrivance of his own design. These days, though, you don’t need pulleys and ropes to build a tide clock; you can just use electronics for display and the NOAA API to get the information you need.

[rabbitcreek’s] build is based around the Xiao ESP32 S3, which is charged with using its Wi-Fi connection to query NOAA up-to-date tide height data. It then uses this information to drive the position of a servo, installed inside a 3D-printed housing. The servo rotates a little red Moon indicator around a central Earth, with our home planet surrounded by a stretched blue marker indicating the swelling of the tides as influenced by the Moon’s gravity.

If you’re a surfer or beach driver that’s always wanting to know the tidal state at a glance, this clock is for you. We’ve featured other tide clocks before, but never any projects that can actually influence the tides themselves. If you’ve figured out how to mess with gravity on a planetary scale, consider applying for a Nobel Prize—but do notify the tipsline before you do.

Waves crash near a rocky shore. Large, SUV-sized blue "floaters" sit in the water perpendicular to a concrete pier. The floaters look somewhat like a bass boat shrink wrapped in dark blue plastic and attached to a large piston and hinge. A grey SUV sits on the pier, almost as if for scale.

US Is Getting Its First Onshore Wave Power Plant

November 28, 2024 by 60 Comments

Renewables let you have a more diverse set of energy inputs so you aren’t putting all your generation eggs in one basket. One type of renewable that doesn’t see a lot of love, despite 80% of the world’s population living within 100 km (~60 mi) of a coastline, is harnessing the energy of the tides. [via Electrek]

“The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wave energy has the potential to generate over 1,400 terawatt-hours per year,” so while this initial project won’t be huge, the overall possible power generation from tidal power is nothing to sneeze at. Known more for its role in shipping fossil fuels, the Port of Los Angeles will host the new wave power pilot being built by Eco Wave Power and Shell. Eco Wave’s system uses floaters to drive pistons that compress hydraulic fluid and turn a generator before the decompressed fluid is returned to the pistons in a nice, tidy loop.

Eco Wave plans to finish construction by early 2025 and already has the power conversion unit onsite at the Port of Los Angeles. While the press release is mum on the planned install capacity, Eco Wave claims they will soon have 404.7 MW of installed capacity through several different pilot projects around the world.

We covered another Swedish company trying to harness tidal power with underwater kites, and if wave power isn’t your thing but you still like mixing water and electricity, why not try offshore wind or a floating solar farm? Just make sure to keep the noise down!

Underwater Kites Buoying The Prospect Of More Tidal Power Generation

November 15, 2023 by 7 Comments

Swedish start-up Minesto has been for years trying to float the idea of having underwater turbines that generate power for use on-shore. These would be anchored to the seafloor by a long tether and move around in figure-of-eight patterns like a kite, which would increase the flow over the turbine’s blades. After a few years of trials, its 1.2 MW Dragon 12 kite will now be installed off the coast of the Faroe Islands.

Previously, Minesto had installed its much smaller DG500 (0.5 MW) kite turbine at Holyhead Deep, in Wales, where a single unit has been tested at a depth of between 65 and 91 meters. So far, only this unit has seen continuous operation. As noted in the linked Tethys report, this one unit was not connected to the grid, and research on its environmental impact is still ongoing as of September 2022. The main concerns are how it might affect cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc.), including potential collisions with these as well as diving birds who might end up diving in the midst of a swarm of kites moving about at fairly high speeds.