Power Wave: Ocean Supplies Alternative Energy

Wave energy conversion can be used to generate electricity, safely replacing our need for toxic fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power plants, and reducing millions of pounds of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions that are produced from coal generated electricity. Clean electricity generation offers the additional benefit of saving millions of dollars on health care related costs due to air pollution. This abundant, renewable energy resource is produced 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is 80 percent efficient.

Wave energy conversion can be accomplished with various technologies, including; onshore devices, near-shore devices, floating (moored) devices and offshore (submerged) devices, like tidal power turbines.

Onshore wave devices such as The LIMPET located on the Isle of Islay, Scotland, trap the waves crashing to shore in an inlet, bay or estuary. The LIMPET uses an inclined oscillating water column (OWC), which was further developed by WaveGen Corp. Graeme Mackie, Senior Engineer at WaveGen, recently spoke at the Ocean Energy2004 Conference, introducing us to the facility. The LIMPET has been in operation for over three years, and is located on the shoreline off the west coast of Scotland. It is an automatically run, unmanned remote operation that utilizes a pair of fixed pitch contra- rotating Wells turbines. The device has a rating of 500kW. 

According to the WaveGen website "the World Energy Council estimates that the energy that can be harvested from the world's oceans is equal to twice the amount of electricity that the world produces now". 

Scotland currently generates approximately 12 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, and they plan to increase that to 40 percent by 2020. The technology already exists to extract the energy from their energetic shoreline, and the technical problems have been solved. The challenge that is left is to make the technology work at a cost that is acceptable to consumers.