There’s A Place In The UK That Can Power An EV With The Moon, Sort Of

There’s A Place In The UK That Can Power An EV With The Moon, Sort Of

OK, so, the place I’m talking about, in Shetland, which is part of Scotland, is on the coast of the Bluemull Sound, and in the area that’s named, confusingly, Yell. On that island, if you have an EV, you can plug it into one particular charging station that is powered, indirectly, by the Moon, which you may have seen in such places as The Sky, or perhaps The Water, when it reflects The Sky. I’ll explain.

There’s A Place In The UK That Can Power An EV With The Moon, Sort Of
Photo: BBC

You see, the gravity of the Moon does a lot of pulling on the Earth’s oceans, which causes them to bulge, which causes a phenomenon known as tides. You’re all from Earth, you know what I mean.

There’s A Place In The UK That Can Power An EV With The Moon, Sort Of
Image: Nova Innovation

Now, in the Bluemull Sound, a body of water affected by tides, there are currently three Nova Innovation 100kW turbines that turn tidal motion into electrical energy. This is the world’s first offshore tidal array, and this array has been providing power to the area for the past five years.

Now, there is what seems to be the first completely tidal-powered electric car recharging station, which is pretty amazing. The CEO of Nova Innovation, Simon Forrest, is clearly proud of this achievement:

“We now have the reality of tidal-powered cars, which demonstrates the huge steps forward we are making in tackling the climate emergency and achieving net zero by working in harmony with our natural environment.”

This is about as close to free energy as one can get — those tides are going to be moving masses of water around whether we do anything about it or not, so why not let that motion spin some turbines? Who’s going to mind if we skim a little energy off the top?

There’s A Place In The UK That Can Power An EV With The Moon, Sort Of
Screenshot: GOOGLE MAPS

May as well use the tides to power our EVs. And, if they’re using the tides to do that, I think we can safely trace it back and say they’re using lunar gravity to provide power for these cars, because I think a Moon-powered EV sounds even cooler than a tide-powered EV, if only because everyone’s just going to immediately think of the detergent when you say “tide-powered.”


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