Powerful and inexorable as it flows to the north, the Gulf Stream comes closest to the continental US at Cape Hatteras. It’s movement creates energy and has potential to become a power source for the Outer Banks and North Carolina. Writing for the Coastal Review Online, Kip Tabb notes the first steps in understanding how the Gulf Stream’s energy potential might be harnessed.
“The Gulf Stream passes at times just 12 miles from Cape Hatteras. The amount of water it carries past our coast is massive. In fact, if it were a river, the Gulf Stream would be the greatest river that ever existed on this planet.
“By the time the Gulf Stream gets off Cape Hatteras (it’s greater than) the flow of all the rivers of Earth . . . 45 times greater the entire flow of every river on Earth is what we have off Cape Hatteras,” said Mike Muglia of the Coastal Studies Institute on Roanoke Island.
A team of researchers and scientists from the institute, N.C. State University and the Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City has been studying for the last two years whether all that water could be put to use to create electricity.”
[box type=”bio”] The energy potential in the Gulf Stream is just beginning to be studied and this article in the Coastal Review Online outlines its tremendous potential.[/box]