WAVE ENERGY HITS COST OBSTACLE

Experimental Efforts to Harvest the Ocean’s Power Face Cost Setbacks

Joshua Hunt and Diane Cardwell, April 27, 2014 (NY Times)

“…Ocean Power Technologies quietly abandoned a pilot project off Oregon’s coast] this month without ever deploying its machine…Despite receiving at least $8.7 million in federal and state grants, Ocean Power told regulators that it could not raise enough money to cover higher-than-expected costs and would instead pursue a similar project in Australia, backed by a $62 million commitment from that country’s government…The shuttering of the ambitious project — which, as the nation’s first grid-connected commercial-scale wave park, was to have 10 buoys supplying power to about 1,000 homes — is the latest setback for the nascent wave energy sector in the United States, which remains in the experimental stage…Tidal power, which captures energy from currents moving in onedirection at a time, as opposed to the wave-based technology of the Ocean Power buoys, is farther along…[because] tidal power is easier to engineer and has been able to adapt expertise from the conventional hydroelectric industry… [E]lectricity generation from the ocean’s waves is more complex, and only a few projects are in the planning stages, despite the vast potential…” click here for more

click to enlarge

Tweet