WAVE ENERGY MOVES AHEAD BACKWARDS

Thomas Edison reportedly tried ten thousand unsuccessful light bulbs before he came up with the one we are just beginning to find a better version of, a century later. The ocean is not going to stop flowing to the shore. The energy is out there. Every unsuccessful trial is a step nearer the harvesting all that emissions-free renewable energy.

As for the environmental impact, will there someday be a wave energy disaster like the current oil spills in San Francisco Bay and the Black Sea? Not according to Mike Clark, spokesman for ocean energy experts Finavera: "Part of the benefit of the design of the device is there are no hydraulic oils…There is little if any environmental impact from having this down there. Basically it is metal with a piece of rubber hose in it."

Crabbers disagree. Al Pazar, chairman, Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission: "We've got a big chunk of iron laying at the bottom of the ocean which will probably gobble up a bunch of crab gear…It's just another place for things to collect and make a big mess."

Still, not exactly an environmental disaster.

Test buoy for wave energy sinks off Oregon coast
November 1, 2007 (AP via Seattle Times)
and
Factbox—Key facts and developments in marine energy
November 3, 2007 (Reuters via Yahoo News Singapore)

WHO
Finavera Renewables (Mike Clark, spokesman);

The Finavera buoy before it went down. (Pic from The Seattle Times)

WHAT
Finavera’s first wave energy test buoy sank, the victim of brutally rough seas. The data it obtained and sent to Finavera’s computers is safe and being used to prepare the next test.

WHEN
- The buoy was deployed in early September and sank in early November, one day before it was scheduled to be hauled in for service and study.
- Finavera will recover the buoy in Spring 2008, when there are calmer waters in the region.

WHERE
- The buoy was deployed off the central coast of Oregon. It is now on the ocean floor, 150 feet below the surface.
- Finavera is based in Canada.

WHY
- The prototype buoy is priced at $2 million.
Finavera is analyzing the computer data generated by the buoy’s lengthy test deployment.
- The Finavera buoy captures the up and down motion of ocean waves flowing through its self-contained turbine and sends the electricity generated to the onshore grid via attached power cables running on the ocean floor.
- The sunken buoy is harmless to the ocean environment.
- 5 facts about marine (wave, tide and current) energy:
(1) Water has more force than wind. It also flows more predictably and consistently.
(2) As a measure of capacity, UK researchers calculated marine energy could provide 20% of UK power needs.
(3) The UK will double the funding of marine energy development after April 2009. At that point, its funding will exceed that of offshore wind and will be double that of onshore funding. This is at least as much because wind will have reached a level of maturity by then as because of anything about marine energy.
(4) The UK expects to get at least 3% of its electricity from marine energy by 2020.
(5) World growth of marine energy between 2007 and 2017 will match the development of wind energy in the 1980s, when wind began to mature.

There is harvestable wave energy density on shore lines all over the world. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Clark: "From our perspective it doesn't hamper the development of the technology at all…This device was going to be broken down anyway and was not going to be put back out in the water."