I've often thought why not dam a whole estuary or bay and use hydro to collect the energy on the the fall and rise of the tide. I know the environmental impact wouldake it unpalatable but are there any reasons it wouldn't work?
This is interesting–it made me wonder if this had ever been considered on NYC's East River, which is a tidal estuary with strong currents. Turns out there's been a company working on it for a while, with free-moving turbines rather than something that spans the whole thing: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/tidal-testing-und...
Meet project Atlantropa, a proposed plan to dam the Mediterranean (or more accurately the atlantic ocean) at the strait of Gibraltar. A project so absurd and gigantic it would deserve its own thread really.
Where I'm from they have some of the highest tides in the entire world and there's an area not far from here that has always been sort of a local talking candidate for such a huge project.
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