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The tides dissipate 3.7 TW (2.5 TW in shallow seas, 1.0 TW via deep-ocean internal tides). An independent recount from the Moon's 3.8 cm/yr recession gives a tidal torque of 4.47e16 N m and a lunar dissipation of 3.14 TW, 84.9% of the total, and a lengthening of the day of 2.08 ms per century. The practical harvestable resource is only tens of gigawatts: 20-80 GW is 0.54-2.16% of the total dissipation and 0.10-0.40% of human power use, because extraction adds drag to and reduces the very flows it diverts.
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William Alexander Aldred (2026) studied this question.
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