The tide rises and falls with high power, and the Jiangxia tidal power station

People who have been to the sea have seen the scene of the sea rising and falling at times. At the entrance of the Qiantang River, which is famous in the mainland, you will see a very spectacular "Qiantang River Angry Tide"; In the Yangtze River on the mainland, you can also see the Yangtze River tide that reaches more than 600 kilometers from the mouth of the sea to the inland. These natural scenes are caused by an energy called a tide. Tides, which are the ebb and flow of seawater on Earth caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun, are a force of nature. The tides contain a huge amount of energy that can lift the sea and form waves that are several stories high. A scholar of the Jin Dynasty named Ge Hong, after watching the furious tide of the Qiantang River, vividly described the power of the tide in the book "Taiping Imperial Records". He said: "The tide comes from the sea in the east, and when it reaches the narrow bay, it is blocked, and it curves from straight to curved, but its strength does not decrease, so the tide rises high and forms a furious tide." When the roaring tide roars, it can set off three stories of water, and the roar is like thunder, unstoppable.

The continent has a coastline of 18,000 kilometers, and scientists calculate that at least 110 million kilowatts of energy are stored in the tides every year, and about 34 million kilowatts of tidal energy can be used to generate electricity. The continent has a long history of harnessing tidal energy. About 1,000 years ago, there was a tidal mill in the Penglai region of Shandong Province, which can use the energy of the tide to push the mill to process grain and other grains.

In modern times, scientists have envisioned the use of tidal fluctuations to promote the generator to generate electricity, the principle of tidal power generation and hydroelectric power generation is the same, is the power of water to drive the turbine rotation in the generator. In 1912, Busum, Germany, built the world's first tidal power station.

The mainland has a long coastline, and after liberation, the state attached great importance to the use of tidal energy, and successively built tidal power stations of different sizes in Shunde, Dongwan, Shandong, Rushan, Shanghai, Chongming and Zhejiang.

In Wenling County, north of Yueqing Bay in Zhejiang Province, there is an ideal bay where the tides fall together, and the largest tidal difference is as high as 8.4 meters. Think about how much power the tide should have when it falls from a height of more than 8 meters! It's almost like a waterfall. Hydropower experts on the mainland took a fancy to this treasure harbor, so they built a dam 670 meters long, 5 meters wide and 16 meters high in the narrow area of the harbor, and then installed a row of drainage generators in the high dam. When the tide rises, the tide rushes into the harbor, pushing the hydroelectric generator installed on the dam to generate electricity; When the sea is low tide, the water level in the harbor is higher than the water level on the surface of the harbor, so when the gate is opened to release water, the water in the harbor flows to the sea, which can also promote the hydroelectric generator to generate electricity. In this way, the sea rises and falls, like a bow left and right, driving the generator installed on the dam in the harbor to generate electricity. Without burning coal or oil, you can rely on the power of nature to generate electricity and bring light to mankind.

The tidal power station in Yueqing Bay, Zhejiang Province, called Jiangxia Tidal Power Station, was designed and constructed from April 1973 to December 1985, enabling five hydroelectric generators to start officially generating electricity. Since 1986, it has generated more than 32 million kilowatts of electricity, second only to the Lens Tidal Power Station in France and the Annapolis Tidal Power Station in Canada.

Since the existing energy sources on the mainland are far from meeting the needs of industrial development, the construction of the Jiangxia tidal power station has set an example for the use of abundant tidal energy along the coast. Accelerating the development of coastal tidal energy will undoubtedly provide these areas with low-cost electricity.