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Wavebob says its device--a large buoy, technically called a self-reacting point absorber, with an internal chamber that can accommodate mechanics and technicians--will be capable of producing 1.5 megawatts of power when the full-scale version is ready in 2010.
Incoming waves pressurize fluids contained in chambers in the buoy, and the pressure then turns a turbine. Unlike other prototypes, Wavebob's device also senses the power of incoming waves and automatically adjusts to maximize pressure and energy extraction.
The company hopes--maybe later in the next decade--to deliver power at 7.5 cents a kilowatt hour, or more than wind (6.8 cents) but less than gas-fired plants (8.3 cents). In a wave energy field, the buoys will sit a few hundred meters apart from each other.
Wave energy won't be easy, Parish adds. Wavebob's founder, William Dick, a physicist who helped computerize distilleries on the island, started working on wave power in the early 1990s. A small prototype in a wave tank in Cork and the quarter-size scale device in Galway have worked fine, but the real test comes with the full-scale device in two to three years off the Mayo coast. If it succeeds, multi-megawatt wave farms can start being planned for 2015 and beyond.
Besides needing to survive harsh seas, the devices have to be cost-effective. To this end, Wavebob has teamed up with Georgia Tech to see if it's possible to make buoys out of concrete rather than steel. Capital will also have to be spent to build coastline power stations and undersea electrical cables, which can cost 1 million euros per kilometer.
Video: S.F. considers ocean-based renewable energy
News.com's Kara Tsuboi talks to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who views tidal and wave power as a swell idea. But how feasible and realistic is this new technology?
With all of the challenges, the government's goals--500 megawatts, 1,900 jobs--are pretty lofty.
"The challenge clearly is getting the first megawatt out. Right now, there are a few electrons trickling on the grid," Parish joked. "Nobody can put up their hand and say, 'We've got it cracked.'"
Then there are the regulatory and environmental issues. In reality, the rules for planning these projects in most countries don't even exist yet. One idea being floated about: putting wave farms in no-fish zones, said Derek Robertson, who runs Wavebob's U.S. arm. Still, even getting halfway would produce a noticeable bump in the energy industry.
Seafood for the masses
While energy constitutes a potential market, food and shipping concerns are driving many of the other projects at the Marine Institute. One of the goals with SmartBay, for instance, is to help come up with an early warning system for problems like red tide, which can decimate fishing stocks and result in millions in losses, or to monitor the health of prawn beds. After conducting tests and landing local customers, the know-how will hopefully be exported.
"It's not that we want to particularly monitor Galway Bay. Our intent is to become a major expert in this field," Ryan said.
Knowledge about the ocean, he added, is fairly sketchy. The Marine Institute, for instance, recently completed a digital map of the bay. It's the first map of the sea floor since the British undertook the job with chains and weights in the 1860s.
Some of the sensors that could grow out of this program are video cameras that can track fish movements and DNA probes that can take censuses of microorganisms. There could also be acoustic and weather monitors for marine traffic.
"We think it will revolutionize oceanic monitoring," Ryan said. "The seabed in deep water is as a least as hostile as deep space. We can monitor Mars on a 24/7 basis, but we're not yet able to do that with the ocean."
"It's about time we caught up with the space guys," he added.
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- Needs more work
- The materials science guys need to consider this contraption. They want to make it out of steel or concrete. Why not polymers? Or is there a reason the weight is important (inertia of the mass, etc.)? I seem to recall the test unit off the coast of Oregon (USA) was doing well, before it sunk. This technology is another small piece of the energy stopgap measures needed as the petroleum decline accelerates. Coupled with such revolutionary concepts as conservation ('Conservative' is the ultimate oxymoron here in the States), wind, solar, nuke and cellulosic or algal biofuels, the species may survive the post-petroleum energy starvation. Of course, we'll have to have WWIII to facilitate the necessary population reduction. Perhaps the 'my god is better than your god' types will get that going.
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- I love the outright lies
- It's required of every alternative energy backer topoint out that "if XXX could be fully developed it could produce YYY terrawatt hours of power, nearly enough to power the entire nation." The problem is that msot alternative enegies are uncontrollable and unreliable - they give the power when they want to, which is never when you need it. Since power demands fluctuate gigantically, Ireland will be lucky if they could use 1/3 of the "20 terrawatt hours" of potential power. And the waste and added expense of unreliable power doesn't stop there - every watt of unreliable generative capacity must be duplicated when power demand inevitably grow in succeeding years - in effect, that very expensive wave power will actually cost nearly twice as much as its proponents claim. That's the reality of unreliable power and why solar thermal, geothermal, biocoal and biomass and nuclear have such gigantic advantages for producing carbon fre power. Its carbon free that's important, not whether the power is "renewable," a totally irrelevant characteristic at this point in time. Ireland will pay thru the nose in order to avoid her sillly fears of nuclear and end up with a primitive, costly melange of power generation technologies.
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- Tidal energy
- This is all well and, perhaps, good. But what will be the effect of increased tidal drag on the rotation og the planet? Tidal drag is significant, and over time has lengthened the day considerably. What happens to the weather, the ambient temperature, etc. if we do something to lengthen the day even more. There really is no free lunch.
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- Your good comments - plus these to consider.
- To your list of considerations for wave and tidal power - add anti-fouling which is never mentioned by proponents, but which is a substantial unsolved technical and economic hurdle and of tremendous environmental concern - since most if not all anti-fouling agents are toxic by their nature and eventually impacting almost all food chains. The maintenance efforts of keeping these in-water structures from being dynamically overcome by the weight and drag of marine organisms growing on their surface is a substantial portion of the systems operating costs - and their cost per KWH. Discussions of alternative energy sources which don't involve honest recognition of their technical and economic challenge details are... dishonest. Unfortunately, the current thinking that is being done on any of these crises - doesn't seem to reflect addressing them with a co-ordinated whole science approach. Perhaps the best example is the fossil fuel crisis. If nothing else is clear - it should be clear that future energy needs will have to come from multiple sources - many of which are not steady state producers - wind, solar, tide, wave, etc. (I don't include biofuels because they are rarely even carbon neutral and far more economically and environmentally problematic than current proponents want to admit.) To effectively use multiple sources of energy we first need a new up-dated and up-graded national (international?) power grid system capable of taking advantage of multiple types of energy inputs - and their various peculiarities and limits - so they can be essentially "averaged" out over a North American grid system. Anyone observed the US government making any proactive progress on the design and implementation of this new power grid system? When you see an alternative energy compatible power grid infrastructure design being addressed in a serious way - you'll know our government has finally become intelligently aware of the energy crisis and begun to prepare for its solutions. I know, I know - we are far too busy examining our leaders' sex lives, religions, and hair cuts to be side tracked by anything as mundane as our children's (and theirs) ability to live a life at least as good as what we have. I particularly like (and agree) the comment that addressed the primary cause of most of our problems today - over population. The 800 lb. gorilla in this discussion room is not only population reduction - and its most probable agents, but the extension of the population reduction problem solution - that of a viable economic system. Humans don't have and have never had a working economic system model for static or declining populations. - at least one that doesn't look like the Dark Ages - it's ignorance, plagues, quite literal warts and all. All successful economic systems to date - require population growth for success. Given the total lack of foresight by world leadership - it will interesting to see when an if the necessary actions come to address all of these problems and if they will be 11th hour - or 13th. Another problem with ponderous species populations - they get in their own way in critical survival events.
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