Hello PhysOrg,

I haven't taken a physics class since high school so please excuse me if my question is particularly idiotic (i really don't know).

I was thinking about how deep and heavy the ocean is and how much pressure the weight of the ocean exerts on the ocean floor. It seems to me like this could be a great source of energy, using the weight of the ocean to compress a valve that winds a coil that spins a sprocket that produces energy...

Could something like this make any sense? What i mean to say is, would it be prohibitively expensive, or inefficient to sink a platform on which there are valves that the ocean's pressure can slowly push that would spin something inside to create energy? I was thinking the energy could be transported to the surface through a wire.

I was thinking that a coastal city, close to a continental shelf, could somehow benefit from something like this. Would the cost to transport the energy be too high?

Also it seems like this idea isn't particularly renewable because once you sink the device with the valves on it the process of retreiving it from the ocean floor and resetting the valves would use up just as much energy as it produced. Right?

thanks for entertaining my thoughts,

Foldspam

Free energy can be made on the earth’s surface.

Use the keys words “cylinder, spheres”

Start with Heading “Perpetual Motion and convincing otherwise”

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foldspam

Hey I think you answered your own question there. To gain any useful surplus of energy that could be used to generate electricity or other mechanical motion requires a difference of energy potential that can be harnessed. Examples are wind, falling water, solar heat, geothermal energy... etc. It is true that there is a lotta pressure down there... but there is nowhere with less pressure down there so a difference of energy potential just isn't there.


Cheers

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