Ocean Energy Projects Developing On and Off America's Shores

Alison Labonte, Marine and Hydrokinetic Technology Manager, DOE
January 28, 2013 | 55 Comments

Take a moment to think about where your electricity comes from and what comes to mind? Perhaps natural gas pipelines and railcars filled with coal -- or maybe solar farms spread across acres of land. Adding to this mix is a newcomer to the field. With advancements in technologies, Americans will soon be able to tap into energy derived from the ocean.

Artist rendering of Ocean Power Technologies' proposed wave park off the coast of Oregon. | Photo courtesy of Ocean Power Technologies.

Marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) technologies — which generate power from waves, tides or currents in ocean waters — are at an early but promising stage of development. Many coastal areas in the United States have strong wave and tidal resources close to areas with high-energy demand. With widespread deployment, these technologies could make substantial contributions to our nation’s electricity needs.

To advance the development of these promising technologies, the Energy Department funds research and development of MHK technologies, including laboratory and field-testing of individual components up to demonstration and deployment of complete, utility-scale systems.

With funding and technical assistance from the Energy Department and landmark permits issued in 2012 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), four U.S. companies are putting wave and tidal energy projects in the water that will generate clean electricity for thousands of homes and pave the way for continued industry growth.

Ocean Power Technologies wave energy device. | Photo courtesy of Ocean Power Technologies.

Wave Power in the Pacific Northwest: Ocean Power Technologies and Columbia Power Technologies

Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), a New Jersey company, is preparing to deploy its wave energy device off the coast of Oregon this spring. OPT received Energy Department support to develop and refine its PB150, a computer-equipped buoy more than 100 feet long. The buoy captures energy by bobbing up and down as waves pass by. FERC gave OPT approval on Aug. 20 to build a grid-connected 1.5-megawatt wave power farm off the Oregon coast, making it the first wave power station permitted in the United States.

Meanwhile, another MHK developer called Columbia Power Technologies (CPT) recently designed a new wave energy device called “StingRay.” A patent application has been filed for the innovation, and testing of a physical model in a wave tank has been completed. Data produced during testing verified that initial performance predictions from computational models were correct and that the new design results in a much more efficient device.

Verdant testing its tidal energy device in New York's East River. | Photo courtesy of Verdant Power.

Off the Coast of Manhattan: Verdant Power

Verdant Power recently finished the latest round of component testing for its Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) Project, a planned array of thirty, 35-kilowatt (kW) commercial class tidal energy turbines -- for a total of 1,050 kW, or about 1 megawatt of total capacity — to be installed in stages in New York City’s East River. RITE was the first commercial tidal power project to be approved by FERC in the United States. The company plans to place its first turbines into the East River in 2014 and complete installation by 2015.

Both Sides of the Pacific: Northwest Energy innovations (Yaquina Head, Oregon, and Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii)

Last August, Northwest Energy Innovations (NWEI) was the first company to test its technology, a scaled model of its wave energy conversion device, at the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center’s new public wave energy testing platform off the coast of Oregon. The results of those tests will enable NWEI to optimize the device and inform development of a commercial-scale device.

NWEI received a grant from the Energy Department to support the Oregon tests and to conduct grid-connected testing on its device at the Navy’s Wave Energy Testing Site in Hawaii.

55 Comments

Gary Ross
February 6, 2013

Gary Rich Interesting concept and yes our patented reef design is simple and could be made into most any shape and will trap sand. When proven useful for specific coastal erosion issues and maybe even of value if Andrew's beach house is saved. If placed where refraction of the wave energy is present, it will focus and align the wave energy as any natural refraction shoaling reef, now how to capture it and store it is the next issue we are talking about ? If only to fire up a desk calculator for an accountant could be the next step for most anyone looking at wave energy. But most everyone also knows that the Ocean is a matrix of stored energy waiting to be harvested. The USA space programs main accomplishment may only be Velcro if you only do just the math.

H. Skip Robinson
February 6, 2013

hskiprob(AT)gmail.com

Andrew H Mackay
February 6, 2013

This is a very bad idea. We have ludicrous proposal of using 'spare electricity' generated by wind turbines to operate a kind of pumped storage scheme in reverse. Ordinary pumped storage does not work at all well - the biggest ones can supply electricity at full capacity for <24 hours and this daft idea will have similar characteristics.

The key to generating electricity 24-7-365 is not from silly electrocmechanical systems like this but thermally from stored renewable heat.

Besides, the prime mover is wind energy and has lamentably low energy density of 1.836 Watt-hours per square metre of seabed. For land based turbines multiply that number by 0.7

Gary Richardson
February 6, 2013

@Gary_Ross
Perhaps your design could be retooled to passively build an alternative to this,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/belgium-island-idUSL6N0AM7GU20130117?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssEnergyNews&rpc=43

Especially with screw anchors for stability.

The challenge I see is how to make a modular design that can scale into hybrid co-generation of sources to reduce wasted energy and increase energy footprint.

Andrew H Mackay
February 2, 2013

Skip,

Renewable space heating is a much bigger market and much more lucrative that generating renewable electricity. That been said, it is possible to heat homes and offices etc AND generate electricity as a by-product.

Please supply me with an email address so that I can send you some speadsheets and stuff. My email address is solutions@greenheating.com

H. Skip Robinson
February 2, 2013

Andrew, I would very much like to learn more on you heat pump system. I'm also looking for the cheapest and most efficient means of transferring heat to electicity and I'm looking for partners to accomplish this.

Andrew H Mackay
February 2, 2013

Gary, I do not know if you are familiar with the term 'flogging a dead horse' or perhaps flogging a dead seahorse in this case.

The trouble with waves is that the decent energetic ones only come to the one offshore location for about 20% of the year. The other 80% is either flat calm, or moderately calm and occasionally huge and destructive. Siting the waves on or near a reef just sucks the energy out of them before they impinge on your wec.

Perhaps you should show your accountant my idea where you will get all of the CAPEX back in the first 8 months of production with a turnover of £28 million.

I have been where you are now and please believe me when I say that you are throwing good money after bad. I am doing you a big favour telling you this so please do not take offence with what I am saying.

Walk away from it as I did with my Gentec venturi idea.

Gary Ross
February 2, 2013

Our patented shoaling reef design will serve to manage wave refraction and with it, will provide lots of opportunity for scientific exploration. If as hoped we can encourage and illicit sand inshore its value by design should assist in the value and hopefully justify the cost on it own. Our theory of many smaller inexpensive WECs loaded on board for the ride will mitigate traditional underwater installation costs. Having WECs high on a reef away from sediment issues will be a huge benefit and just offshore of the largest wave event of any area will help insure longevity. We plan to invite other researchers and universities to join us to try their own WEC design on the reef to be installed in a calm harbor. It is possible to use the plumbing to consider air or hydraulic fluid in a closed system or use the pipe reef as electrical conduit but like the simple and environmental aspects of pumping sea water ashore in the pipe reef as it gives other options for desalinization and or estuary flushing. Other mariculture aspects are also of value. Our design is a shuttle and a platform for WECs. We believe our exploration in this technology perspective will not have to consider the costs per kw yet to justify our research at this stage. If we provide a system that has little or no maintenance it may not replace a power plant but if it can provide power for a small community it could replace the need for fuel oil generators in strategic locations as a green alternative. Latest research is now challenging the assumption of more potential energy offshore. We may even satisfy a competitive cost per kw over time with success and inshore. The easy deployment and or removal will have military and humanitarian aspects and mitigate permitting costs to keep the accountants happy.

Andrew H Mackay
February 1, 2013

Skip,

I came up with pretty much the exact same vertical axis turbine several years ago but what does it generate? Heat or electricity?
I used mine to boost the dT for a ground source heat pump to radically improve the COP. The added advantage is that your soil heat store will keep on growing as more heat is put in than is ever taken out.

Gary,

The energy density of a fixed location near shore is all you need to predict that static WECs will never deliver meaningful amounts of electricity.

Deep oceanic wave power in random areas withing a prospect area will give you a resource of 1200kW/m wavefront easily as opposed to 5 - 8kW/m near shore.

A 10MW system set up in Scotland's N. Atlantic will turnover a bare minimum of £28 million per annum. The capital outlay will be a one off £10 million and the OPEX will be the crew's wages and ship maintenance - so add a couple of mil. to cover that per year.

Gary Ross
February 1, 2013

Andrew, my interest is conversion of the oscillating wave energy not tidal streams. Its possible to manage it with a well designed offshore shoaling reef using several smaller WECs to capture and push sea water. Developers have underestimated the issues planting WECs precisely in the energy zones. Better to consider a shoaling reef that can be towed in and quickly installed with WECS on board and to push water to shore with good plumbing and the right check valves. HDPE pipe is a perfect building material in every way, 200 yr. half life and tons of history in the ocean, floats and easily sinks. The Pipe structure becomes the plumbing. Our patented design has porosity to attract and sand in the 3 D structure aside from anchors and hoop strength of the arch form reef. The wave conversion platform can be precisely located to optimize performance for any wave climate with the vision of several smaller pumps sending good head pressure to shore for turbine conversion. Would your WEC fit on our reef?

H. Skip Robinson
February 1, 2013

Andrew, sounds like you came up with the same conclusion my engineers came up with. They spent quite a while designing a venturi, trying to increase water speed to the turbine and the results, although not stated, are dismal in my opinion. Would you mind looking at my wind and water turbine design. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NTbAz9GyHw - I'm thinking of changing from the horizontal flipping panel system to a vertical flipping of a panels, as shown in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytLfMzkWjBg - I think three panels in wind and four panels in water creates greatest efficiency. I have someone helping me build the three 4'x 8' panels for a wind turbine prototype. I think I'm going to try to sell them in DIY kit form.

Andrew H Mackay
February 1, 2013

In reality, tidal stream is a complete waste of effort and time with a conversion from total available resource to real time electricity at <5% which is pretty pathetic in engineering terms.

However, converting all of the tides' kinetic energies into heat directly and storing it in large thermal accumulators gives you the option to generate subject to demand 24-7-365. Doing the maths, the proposal to convert(tidal stream)shaft power into heat and back into (generator) shaft power will give you approximately 10 times more electricity that these simplistic electromechanical real time TSGs.

I abandonned my Gentec venturi idea because you cannot get away from the fact that tidal streams are all a very low energy dense resource.

H. Skip Robinson
February 1, 2013

Hydro Alternative Energy found that most free flowing currents around the world run at less the three (3) mph. Even though most people live in close proximity to water, a constant fast flow like the Florida Current, is just not available as a viable resource. Large Tidal flows are not that common either where there are major populations. My turbine, we were told by our engineers, needs 4+/- mph to make it finanically viable. They're supposedly looking at a design that speeds up the water but that is going to cost so much that you might as well just continue to build dams. That is the problem with dams, the cost and maintenance often times get placed on the taxpayers and is not always factored into the electrical costs giving hydroelectic power an unfair advantage. I am telling you that we now have a really inexpensive totally environmentally friendly energy source (heat at 180 to 600 C) that needs to be utilized to run or world. In my opinion, which should not be relied upon as absolute, hydro is now basically moot.

Andrew H Mackay
February 1, 2013

I don't give a beavers'dam about this thread anymore - it has gone way off subject and the comments are purile in the main. Nobody actually READS AND COMMENTS on the posts so this debate is going absolutely nowhere.I posted the following about 25 posts ago and there was zero comments on the subject matter but lots of comments on fishing and beavers!

"Gary, The biggest problem with tidal streams is the lack of 'energy density' of the resource before you extract the energy from it. It works out at just 6kW(mech) per vertical square metre in a 6m/sec maximum tidal stream regime. By the time that you convert that into electricity you would be doing well to get > 1kW(e)/m^2. This figure discounts the area of the seabed required to provide the necessary separation; including this we would need to divide the numbers above by ~ 25! The wave energy resource in a fixed location near shore due to cabling considerations works out at 8kW/linear metre of wave front and you might get to convert a quarter of that into unfirm electricity. However, if you are prepared to travel to where the best and biggest waves are in the prospect area as outlined in my invention, then the wave energy resource jumps to a massive 1200kW/linear metre of the mobile beach. With that resource available to convert into heat and back into generator shaft power it is easy to see that real time generation by these 'cutting edge' devices is going to end in tears."

I rest my case!

Gary Ross
January 31, 2013

We went from wave energy to dynamiting dam beavers or is that a beavers dam? " I don't give a beavers dam" . Sounds like a good tee shirt idea?

H. Skip Robinson
January 31, 2013

I'm sure there are good reasons to dynamite a beaver dam now and than. LOL, Sometimes Mother Natures criters, including man are an all together different story.

terry hallinan
January 31, 2013

H. Skip Robinson,

"I don't like dams. They dramatically affect the environment."

You want to exterminate beavers? Many of us think they are good for the environment generally though they can be a terrific nuisance and do harm.

There are dams - and then there are dams.

Mostly I agree with you, Skip.

Best, Terry

terry hallinan
January 31, 2013

Buck,

"Terry: I thought the article was for Non heat generating energy production. What I thought Hydroelectric was all about."

When cold waters in free-running streams are dammed, the water may be warmed by the sun and can turn lethal to some fish, more from growth of toxic elements than the warm water itself.

That is the heat I accepted as a potential threat. Run of river power [no, dammit, not low dams but undammed water] avoids many of the problems if care is taken not to divert water when the river flow is low but is seasonal and therefore intermittent.

Best, Terry

Frank Heller
January 31, 2013

The Dam inventory for Maine reveals many are 100 years old; and that most of the ponds and lakes in Maine were formed by these dams. Haven't had a dam 'wash out' in a long time; a recent 'alarmist' report about Maine dams resulted in a finding that the potential threat was IF the dam should 'wash out', not that there was any chance it would. Most dams simply build on rock outcrops, often where there were once steep rapids or a water fall; many are made of granite blocks which may leak and even move off base; but won't give way. One I am very familiar with, looked like a sprinkler with 3' going over the top of the dam and through a spillway, but no way was it going to 'wash out'. Even old log dams are found to be sound and left alone. The politics of dam removal pit vacation and other home owners, recreational users against a dwindling number of salmon fishermen and some white water kayak & rafting groups who want to profit after the dam is out. We now have a major threat from ice jams floating down stream from a dam site to jam up against bridge abutments and expensive docks never designed to handle ice chunks. Floods from major rain 'events' are now a major threat to culverts and bridges. Rt. 17 was cut in two places last spring when the runoff from ski resort development and an 18 hole golf course took out two bridges. Wind farms cause extensive runoff with access road and transmission line corridor clear cuts, making down stream flooding even worse. ....And the salmon still aren't returning. New power dams in New Brunswick and Mass. now facilitate salmon, alewife, river herring, and even shad migration; so it's no longer an either/or situation. One river group buried research on successful migratory fish diversion inside their data base so people wouldn't see the success stories.

terry hallinan
January 31, 2013

H. Skip,

Chena has estimated they can deliver power from tepid geothermal waters for about 1 cent/kwhr.

1 is less than 2 or 2.5.

Neither has been yet accomplished at those prices but Chena has a fully installed functioning "reverse air conditioning" system keeping an ice museum frozen in summer with warm water for one thing.

http://tinyurl.com/a54n9j5

Best, Terry

ANONYMOUS
January 31, 2013

How did LOW ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTION devices sneak into a discussion on Ocean Energy? way off topic..suggest you start your own blog or write an article.

H. Skip Robinson
January 31, 2013

I don't like dams. They dramatically affect the environment. From flooding that reconstitutes the soil to animal and fish habitate and migrations. You put in a dam and now property that hasn't seen a flood in the last hundred years, all of a sudden, is washed away as water always seeks the lowest path of resistance. Have you noticed when humans screw around with mother natures design, she almost always retaliates in some manner. Once a dam is installed and the environment changes to adapt, we must carefully weight the potential effects of changing it back. Remember, for some, it is just another government contract and they couldn't give a "damn" about the potential ramifications.

BUCK SHAW
January 31, 2013

Terry: I thought the article was for Non heat generating energy production. What I thought Hydroelectric was all about. So it makes no logic to me to remove exsisting dams. Are there not sound principles involved. It seems those in favor of removal are also big advocates for this RE. I believe in supply and demand, will this not raise the price of energy. I am truely at a loss for the thinking behind this removal program. Or is it a generational fad maybe.

H. Skip Robinson
January 31, 2013

Terry, not at the price that LENR can deliver. They have estimated <$0.025 kWh (electrical) and no grid is necessary as the units can literally be placed anywhere. They are now looking for partners and investors to bring potential products to the market and will of course, as they have already done in the past with others, allow full testing and validation of their technology by a "legitimate" and "motivated" party. The thermal output has been tested up to 600° C. and they have fully tested and planned a 45 kWh thermal unit for mass production that can either stand alone or be placed in series at an estimated cost of $0.0035 kWh. Retail fuel costs for both the hydrogen and nickel is estimated at $25 per 6 months with cartridges that can be easily replaced by even the consumer. Long term maintenance cost will be low as well.
I know it sounds too good to be true but you would not have as many people involved with this, as there is if it were not true. Even the US Navy is involved with LENR and have reported a COP over 1. Apparently, it does not break the 2nd law of thermal dynamics. From what I can discern, it has something to do with having broken the Coulomb Barrier at a much lower temperature than though possible. You physics guys need to sink your brains into this because the potential applications are almost endless.
I know that this is a hydro blog but there is something available "now" that is a "realistic" game changer. I thought when I designed and tested my water turbine, I was going to change the world a little. A $million to just install a 1 MW unit, pressuring the electronics and transmission, etc. just runs up the costs, making it uncompetitive against the fossils and nuclear. They're still planning more high temp. nuclear plants despite what has happened around the world. We cannot let this happen.

Frank Heller
January 31, 2013

Dams are an integral part of a tidal energy system and sustain the ocean fishery. Tide comes in, gets stored and then released slowly through the gates and into the turbine(s). With enough water, the only time you lose flow is dead high tide. I've seen lobster pounds with 24" drains that never stop flowing.

In a fresh water system, the dam provides a far more diverse set of benefits that the narrow range of negatives salmon restorers protest over.

Among them are nourishing a watershed which includes forest and other greenery vital to removing CO2, storing carbon, and putting oxygen back into the air; sustaining a much larger fishery than the stream which replaces the pond or lake that is lost---today's bad news on Maine's off shore fishery only strengthens the case for revitalizing fresh water fishing as a food source for all strata of society; protecting us from both floods and drought--Maine's Androscoggin River was 'tamed' with a series of dams whose gates are synchronized during heavy rain runoff; and enhancing the property value along the lake or pond shores----one of the biggest obstacles comes when shoreline associations realize the impact of removing a dam on their waterfront and the towns realize that revaluing lost shore will cost them tens of millions of dollars in property taxes. Hell hath no fury like a shoreline owners association of Boston lawyers who will sue if the level of Clary Pond drops more than 5".

Until the Salmon becomes the preferred species of fish, many people will continue to fish for everything from bass and landlocked salmon to perch and sunnies.

Migratory species are simply not returning to Maine's rivers.

We've spent hundred's of millions of dollars 'restoring' native salmon and the count on the Penobscot last year was 83; alewives were six ft. deep in the fishway on the Andro. but NO SALMON.

The problem lays far at sea.

In any case tidal energy dams can restore a food source we all can enjoy.

Andrew H Mackay
January 31, 2013

Why are we going way off subject?

Philip Haddad
January 30, 2013

Buck, I assume it is because of the salmon, but I don't know.

terry hallinan
January 30, 2013

Thanks, Frank Heller.

You don't have to go to Europe to see old flour mills powered by running river water being utilized today.

When I was very young we had fruits and vegetables canned by such a converted mill in Oregon but I doubt it is in operation today. New England reportedly has an electric utility using such a mill. Most be hellacious finding parts for a 19th Century flour mill. :-)

Best, Terry

Best, Terry

terry hallinan
January 30, 2013

h-skip-robinson H. Skip Robinson,

"As Tesla and many others have experienced"

I thought Tesla was dead. He has been proven partly wrong in any case but that is a whole 'nother story.

I will believe LENR when it is working in the field with cheap, massive storage of power available on demand.

There is no need for it because baseload renewable energy is readily available in massive quantities but that is also a whole 'nother story.

Best, Terry

terry hallinan
January 30, 2013

Buck,

"why are the enviromentalist removing Hydroelectric Dam's in Northern California. Because of Salmon? Really!"

Yes.

"or is it because of the heat?"

That too kinda.

Damming water can cause all kind of ecological and economic problems.

My boyhood hometown of Klamath Falls, OR, was a sometime focus of a Bush-Cheney campaign with Cheney playing the heavy. The problem was that during drought conditions there was not enough water for irrigation and farmers were threatened. Indians downstream needed a reasonable water flow for the salmon they depended on for part food and livelihood. You can guess who got screwed the most.

Dams can be a blessing and/or a curse but people tend to think of the problems afterwards rather than before building the dams.

Many fish besides salmon are threatened by dams around the world. There are also enormous problems between countries when downstream countries lose their water.

Best, Terry

Whats going on?

Gary Ross
January 30, 2013

The good news is our two decades trying in California gave us plenty of time for refection and to perfect our technology, the goal was a shoaling reef adjustable to any wave climate and bathymetry that would be easy to transport and inexpensive to instal, removable and last 200 plus years, lucky we had day jobs. We figured it out.....on paper and in the lab but wasted more time and effort and $ in three attempts to test it in California. We we then realized that we had figured out a way to focus and direct and magnify wave energy while helping to mitigate shoreline erosion. We looked for something off the shelf to harvest our wave energy on the reef but had to design it ourselves. We have the advantage of free plumbing on our all natural gas made HDPE reef which serves as a shuttle and platform for many WECS. We plan on testing our latest WEC prototype this summer at OSU. Oregon is in the mood for wave energy unlike my home state that mandates it and other renewables by law and makes more laws to make it impossible to consider. I will miss California, still hoping for Hawaii but looking at island states that really need our technology and will not require the extra 5 million dollars and 10 more years for permitting.

Gary Ross
January 30, 2013

Frank Heller
January 30, 2013

I like the pico wave power device invented in Galveston, TX to power a dock sign. I also like an offshore wave machine which compresses air and stores it on the bottom to be released to generate power as needed. Quieter.

Frank Heller
January 30, 2013

There is new publication to assist you to permit projects:

"Permitting and Leasing for Maine Marine Hydrokinetic (MHK) Power Projects", MHK Power Project Roadmap 2013, released last week.

Frank Heller
January 30, 2013

Several of you need to watch Romy's 2 disk CD on nearly 400 European water mills --http://www.muehlendvd.de/indexe.htm to understand that water power can do a lot more work than simply make electricity. One application is running wood pellet machine or even a chipper. Others are grinding and polishing stone. Several more need to make the pilgrimage to Maine and study working tidal mills and witness the power of impounded water rushing out of a 25' x 6' gated salt water pond into a harbor to realize you're not much of an engineer if you can't squeeze out power from this....as have thousands of others for many centuries. And at least one of you, needs to look at Tokyo's SEABELL to see how a compression wave can create more energy out of flowing or falling water. If you are interested in underwater currents and Gorlof turbines, when you come to Maine you can visit the composites lab to see how they are made and then journey to Eastport to see the OREC site, which I believe is the first Tidal site putting power into the grid.

H. Skip Robinson
January 30, 2013

I'm a shareholder having been one of the founding members of Hydro Alternative Energy and studied the potential costs of free standing wave and current systems and it is just way to expensive. The Florida Gulf is a beautiful place but FAU has been waiting for quite a while just to be able to test various systems. I still don't think after 4 years they've gotten the permits even though that have received a couple of grants, in excess of $5 million. As an inventor it's like banging you head against a wall.

Gary Ross
January 30, 2013

Being a surfer, I am used to traveling for the best and biggest waves but believe we have not yet discovered the best way to harvest the abundant 10 second interval wave energy common almost everywhere. I admit you will get more KWs from Oregon and the north sea but believe its possible to keep Corona's cold with wave power on your private island in the British Virgin Islands when we understand and improve the WEC technolgy and how about the idea of focusing the wave energy before you harvest it?

Andrew H Mackay
January 30, 2013

Gary, The biggest problem with tidal streams is the lack of 'energy density' of the resource before you extract the energy from it. It works out at just 6kW(mech) per vertical square metre in a 6m/sec maximum tidal stream regime. By the time that you convert that into electricity you would be doing well to get > 1kW(e)/m^2. This figure discounts the area of the seabed required to provide the necessary separation; including this we would need to divide the numbers above by ~ 25! The wave energy resource in a fixed location near shore due to cabling considerations works out at 8kW/linear metre of wave front and you might get to convert a quarter of that into unfirm electricity. However, if you are prepared to travel to where the best and biggest waves are in the prospect area as outlined in my invention, then the wave energy resource jumps to a massive 1200kW/linear metre of the mobile beach. With that resource available to convert into heat and back into generator shaft power it is easy to see that real time generation by these 'cutting edge' devices is going to end in tears.

Gary Ross
January 30, 2013

Andrew you have a good point for tidal turbines. It is possible with head pressure from wave energy to push water up a hill or in storage tanks to provide more continues power or direct with reasonable wave activity. You can switch from the storage to keep the head pressure going. Because wave energy is in the infant stage please don't toss it it the babies bath water, it is very different than tidal. Current technology is primitive and not sensitive enough to harvest what is breaking on the beach. Wave energy will become more valuable when we learn how to extract the dynamic energy.

Andrew H Mackay
January 30, 2013

I notice that nobody has addressed the 'intermittency problem'. The irony is, of course, that these marine turbines are in the main asynchronous or induction type generators. These machines all induce pure synchronous electricity on to their windings; adding in some shaft power from wind, wave and tidal turbines and we get dribs and drabs of 'amplified electricity' out. These operate in the same way as audio amplifiers 'rubbish signal in; rubbish signal out'. No utility grid can handle any more than 10% of the dynamic generation portfolio at an given moment because the more rubbish electricity being induced is amplified and fed back onto the grid. This round robin feedback results in grid collapse.

In the UK we already have 'constraints payments' for not generating electricity to keep below the 10 to 100% ratio. The story for the gullible is somewhat different!

All talk of dodgy intermittent electricity from renewables accounting for any more than 10% of all electricity production is just pie in the sky!

Gary Ross
January 30, 2013

I like the tin hats and bolt storage ideas. Being an inventor who has a simple patent pending design and one published paper and 2 decades of work to easily capture a fraction of energy from the matrix of energy traveling and landing on every shore of every ocean. I believe our underwater football field with 250 WECs can provide a 1 mw plant where the power station is located in the garage of a respectable beach home and with out anything floating orange objects on the surface or any underwater power cables. It we hope will keep a 6 pack cold and power up your tesla to start. It will push lots of water ashore and good if we have an estuary to flush or need to need desalination as a energy efficient first step in the process. "the one who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do" Steve Jobs

BUCK SHAW
January 30, 2013

Phillip; why are the enviromentalist removing Hydroelectric Dam's in Northern California. Because of Salmon? Really! or is it because of the heat? Whats going on?

Frank Heller
January 30, 2013

I'm heavily involved in preparing an on-line Atlas of the most promising Tidal Energy Sites in Maine and in adapting proven hydroelectric turbines to a marine environment using marine composites. Maine has a legacy of over 2,000 tidal energy sites that date back to the 1700's; many have large tidal impounds and enable nearly continuous energy generation and have both recreational, property, and fishery benefits. Entire village economies once grew outward from these sites, and large restorable mill buildings still exist. With several thousand islands, there are numerous points where tidal waters are compressed between ledge to yield 8 knot currents. In all, civil works remain that can be restored using the original granite blocks, berms, diversion canals, etc. Field teams will be deployed this spring and summer to assess the sites, measure water volumes, ecology, habitat, etc. If you are a potential ocean/energy developer, be aware the original WIND INITIATIVE has turned its attention to ocean/tidal currents and developed a fast track permitting process similar to the one which enabled wind farms to spread throughout Maine. I recruiting environmental studies students with a suitable background to do the site work this summer. If you can re-purpose your internship, we will train you, cover expenses and place you in some of the most beautiful coastal sites in the world.

H. Skip Robinson
January 30, 2013

No need for a bolt box anymore as(LENR) is ready to go and has numerious third party vaildations. Just because no technical journal(s) have yet to publish, doesn't mean much under the circumtances nor doesn't mean it won't be. They can now start and stop it and control the temp both up and down to 600C. As Tesla and many others have experienced, game changers are always met with heavy resistence. It is going to be very interesting how all this unfolds in relation to the IP, competition and what level of COP can be eventually achieved. If anyone wants to debate their peers, the best place I've seen to do this is http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/ and it's an open forum if you can hang with them.

ANONYMOUS
January 30, 2013

Very good update article on the progress of ocean renewables in the US.

Perfectly useless tinfoil hat comments. When I see a comment from an electric utility about the goodness or badness of wave and tidal energy, then I'll listen.

terry hallinan
January 30, 2013

Andrew H Mackay,

"These marine activities have already been tried and tested in the UK and elsewhere and has been an expensive failed experiment."

Before I started school a very long time ago, I proved with a magnifying glass and some dead leaves that solar power can burn down old bunkhouses.

Because I couldn't yet read and write, I was unable to submit this information to technical journals despite lots of subsidiary heat from Mom and Dad.

Pity that but cooling ocean water might have put out the fire if we hadn't been in the middle of a desert far from any ocean.

Wave power has made great strides and is far more efficacious than the wildly overhyped solar and wind power but you are right that it is still intermittent. No intermittent power source can replace fossil fuels until somebody invents a bolt box that can store the lightning bolts needed when the intermittents are generating little or no power.

Best, Terry

H. Skip Robinson
January 30, 2013

With both LENR and Fuel Cells getting close to production, the other alternatives, I don't believe, can compete anywhere. The cost of free standing hydro is just to expensive to install and maintain. With one Fuel Cell company now being third party verified to cost less than $0.06 a kWh, and electricity from LENR even cheaper, estimated at <$0.025 kWh retail, I don't know of any other clean tech that can compete with those numbers. An MIT lab has had a LENR reaction going continuously for over 1 year and privates are getting COPs above 6. The U.S. Navy has had a reaction going as well as other Universities. Both technologies can be set up anywhere in the world in small applications thereby decentralizing the power grid. Why is this not being reported in the main stream media? I don't know? Do you think that it just might have something to do with geo-political ramifications of such an affect on the current fossil fuel, nuclear, geothermal & hydro dam industries who would have drastic affects on their bottom lines and they have $trillions invested? Go figure, they're both having a tough time raising the money to bring their products to the market place. Lots of tire kicking though, even by folks from NASA.

ANONYMOUS
January 30, 2013

TWO bloggers who disagree over hydrokinetic energy that will grow no mater what you believe.

Wait till they install the turbines in the 3000 ft below the surface to take advantage of the currents (gulf loop current) and potential full time energy.

Look at he other alternative; solar stored in batteries that exploded and half a life of 7-12 hours and we just sold the technology to China

Philip Haddad
January 30, 2013

Andrew, I am talking about the excess heat we are adding into an environment that was in sort of a heat balance before humans started burning fossil fuels at a greater rate than than the rate of replacement by photosynthesis. Fossil fuel consumption has risen dramatically from about 2 terrawatts in 1920 to 16 terrawatts in 2008. Sixteen terrawatts is equivalent to 50x10E16 btus in a single year. That is equivalent to 500 mount Saint Helen's eruptions. The mass of the atmosphere is 1166x10E16 pounds with a specific heat of 0.24 btu/#-*F. That amount of heat has the potential to raise the atmospheric temperature by 0.17*F. Actual measured rise was about 1/4th that due to cooling by melting of ~800 billion tons of glacial ice. CO2 has the potential to add heat through absorption of infra red. It also has the potential to remove 5000 btus of solar energy per pound of CO2 converted to trees through photosynthesis. The net gain or loss of heat by an increase of 8o ppm CO2 is hard to determine, but the heat alone is enough to account for all the effects we see. Eighty percent of the CO2 we emit cannot be accounted for in the atmosphere so it might be causing a lowering of pH in the oceans, but an increase in acid rain from more use of coal in China might also be the cause. I think we can agree, whether its CO2 or heat causing the problem, that fossil fuels must be phased out. I contend that total nuclear power world wide must not exceed 0.5 terrawatt, (that being my guestimate that the net cooling now being obtained by photosynthesis is 1 TW).

Andrew H Mackay
January 30, 2013

Philip, heat makes the world go round. Thermal energy from the Sun evaporates seawater, which create thermals, which create differences in air pressure, which creates wind, which creates waves etc etc.

Now CO2 in the atmosphere allows too much evaporation and creates stormier weather but also raises the planet's normal operating temperature above acceptable standards.

Renewable heat is the key to saving Earth from overheating. Renewable heat created directly from the kinetic and potential energies in marine renewable sources can be easily stored for thermal conversion into electricity later.

Philip Haddad
January 30, 2013

It is apparent that many people believe that nuclear power is an acceptable source of energy because it does not emit CO2. It is not CO2 that is causing global warming, it is the heat released by our use of energy, most of which is supplied by fossil fuels. When we burn fossil fuels we get heat (which is why we burn them) and by-product CO2. Where does this heat go? Into the atmosphere or cooling water where it raises temperature and melts glaciers. Nuclear power adds twice as much total heat as its electrical output The true renewables are those technologies which remove as much energy from the environment as they then return in more usable form, such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass,tidal or wave and who knows what others will be developed. All new technologies will have learning curves and growth problems. We have no alternative. Energy from fossils and nuclear must not be expanded and should be replaced as soon as possible.

Andrew H Mackay
January 30, 2013

Are you saying that tidal and wave power is going to save the planet by supplying intermittent pulses of electricity?

There is essentially two distict types of electricity; firm capacity (to supply on demand) and unfirm capacity (to supply subject to the vagaries of tide and weather)that requires constant fossil and or nuclear backup. Do you recognise the difference between the two types?

<5% of a resource into unfirm capacity will do more harm than good to our precious planet on which we all depend on for survival.

David King
January 30, 2013

I'm sorry Andrew, but wave and tidal generation are now demonstrably practical, they may not yet be profitable, but there is no doubt that all countries with a coastline and reasonable reach of sea from their coasts should invest in all forms of marine energy. Climate change is real and it behoves us to maximise use of renewable generation methods. We have already access to enough fossil fuels to destroy our planet if we continue to exploit them without costing their secondary effects.

David King
January 30, 2013

Andrew H Mackay
January 30, 2013

These marine activities have already been tried and tested in the UK and elsewhere and has been an expensive failed experiment. Generating electricity in 'real time' from tides and waves produces next to no useful consumable electricity. Only 5% of the total tidal kinetic energy is converted into electricity in small pulses between tides and wave power outputs hardly register on the same scale.

Yes, I realise that we all need renewables to work and so save the planet for our children but we are burning more and more coal, gas (natural and shale) and oil like there is no tomorrow and the best that mankind can deliver is intermittent pulses of electricity at all the wrong times!