Ocean Cleantech Hits the Prime Time: Five Ways Waves Might Power Our Stuff

There’s great potential in the rolling waves, and we humanfolk have sensed it for years. The force of those crashing waves, their limitless supply—if we could only tap into the power of that interminable motion, the energy latent in each cresting water scythe, well, that’d be an ideal electricity-maker, no?

Lofty-minded innovators have been looking to harness that power for centuries—the first patent for a device designed to generate energy from waves was filed over 200 years ago, in 1799. The first working wave power generator was (briefly) deployed in France in 1910, and kept the lights on in a single house.

As Philip Bump points out, there have been hundreds of patents filed since then; hundreds of earnest attempts to generate electricity from waves. Waves, mind you—not tides. This isn’t tidal power we’re talking about here, though there’s some equally intense interest in harnessing the power of that pull, too. But even with many decades worth of big-brained, sweat-stained human inquiry honed in on the puzzle, we’ve turned up relatively little so far. Generating power out there on the rocky seas and safely and efficiently transmitting it back to land is a thorny prospect, you know.

Which is why the latest entrant into the wave power pursuit, something called a Power Buoy from Ocean Power Technologies, is especially noteworthy—it’s the first commercial generator that will be linked up to the grid here in the U.S. of A. The New York Times reported that the project will officially launch in October, after the “federal permit for up to 10 generators came last month, enough, the company says, to power about 1,000 homes. When engineers are satisfied that everything is ready, a barge will carry the 260-ton pioneer to its anchoring spot about two and a half miles offshore near the city of Reedsport, on the central coast.”

Each Power Buoy has a tiny little computer that allows it to “tune itself” to “each incoming wave, adjusting the way the giant internal shaft rides up and down as the swell passes through. The up-and-down motion of the shaft creates the electricity, which goes to shore through a seabed cable.” Power Buoys have already been deployed in Spain, Scotland, and in test runs off the coast of New Jersey. None have yet reached commercial scale, however.

Which means wave power dreamers everywhere will be paying attention with wide-eyed acuity. See, we’ve been inching closer to feasible wave power for years now, ever since the last decade of global climate concern ushered in a surge in interest in renewable energy technology. Given that the tech is even less mature than solar or wind or geothermal, riskier, and even more difficult to transmit, investment has been sparse in the wave power sector—but the ideas have been flowing.

Here, for instance, is an alternative to OPT’s Power Buoy project—it’s Pelamis Wave Power, which kind of looks like a giant sea snake.

This brief video offers a nice explanation of how it works:

Another novel idea; more moving parts. Waves spill in, flow out through the hatch on the bottom, turning a turbine in the process. The wave dragon debuted in 2003.

Let’s step things up here and get a bit more ambitious. How about giant nearshore underwater robo-pumps?

Or tiny underwater fleets of flaps, swaying like seaweed on the ocean floor?

If the power buoy proves successful, we might see a surge in investment in some of these ideas; we may line our coasts with power-gathering contraptions that finally harness those wind-blown waves. Somehow, somewhere, the ocean will turn our turbines.