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New Wave Power Research Rising Off Oregon Coast

Posted by Zonk on Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:12 PM
from the less-smoky-than-coal-less-radiationy-than-nuclear dept.
Power Science
necro81 writes "A prototype buoy has been launched off the Oregon coast to try generating electrical power from the ever-present waves. The OSU device works like a giant shake-up flashlight. It is one of several competing designs to take advantage of a potential clean energy goldmine. It will be years before substantial power is contributed to the grid, but several companies have received permits to develop test platforms. The New York Times has an article that surveys the current outlook for wave energy, which it compares to wind energy's prospects back in the 1980s. Concerns about impacts to wildlife and fishing remain to be answered."
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Submission: Wave Power Research off Oregon Coast by necro81 (917438)
[+] UK Wants Huge Expansion In Offshore Wind Power 264 comments
OriginalArlen writes "The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to expand the existing offshore wind turbine farms, which are already extensive, to an estimated 7,000 units — two per mile of coastline — enough to generate 20% of the UK's power needs by 2020. The newly green-friendly Conservative opposition party is also backing the scheme. Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."
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  • "Current outlook" (Score:5, Funny)

    by dvonhand (1136711) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:21PM (#21628651)
    Experts predict that current will flow from the anode to the cathode terminal in the near future.
    • Great, we now have the nerd equivalent of the Weekly World News Zodiac Astrologer (WWWNZA?). Taurus: Your code will compile with unexpected results. Also a diet of cheetos and soda pop will lead to weight gain. Scorpio: Experts predict that current will flow from the anode to the cathode terminal in the near future. Also romance prospects with your new Macbook Pro look promising. So on and so forth.

  • Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timeOday (582209) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:22PM (#21628655)
    Sounds like most of the resistance is from the fishing industry, but since it's not a very well proven technology, I'd say they have a fair point. So the current plan - to do some small proof-of-concept wave farms first - seems just the right thing to do. From the end of the article:

    Philip D. Moeller, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a supporter of wave and tidal energy projects, said the government was "not allowing these to go into sensitive areas." Mr. Moeller added, "We haven't defined sensitive area, but the point is we'll be cognizant of that."

    He said the commission was encouraging wave energy companies to seek a new five-year "pilot license" the commission has created specifically for wave and tidal energy projects. The license, which could be gained in six months, would let companies set up a short-term wave farm to test technology and demonstrate success to wary investors. If environmental damage became evident, he said, the equipment could be removed from the ocean fairly quickly, something that is far more complicated with dams.

    • Honestly, if there's any industry that's crippled by this, it's the surfing industry. Unfortunately, they can't afford very good lobbyists.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jcr (53032)
        Who do you know that surfs miles offshore?

        -jcr
        • Perhaps he was thinking that since the generators will be removing energy from the ocean before it gets to the beach, the waves that form near the shore won't be as big? Although I wouldn't think they would be removing enough energy to matter.

    • I thought that most of the resistance came from the expense of superconductors. My bad.

  • New Wave Power? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Colonel Sponsz (768423) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:24PM (#21628663)
    So... I'm assuming harnessing New Wave Power off the coast of Oregon will be about dumping Adam & the Ants in the Pacific and attaching a generator and power cables to them? Hey, I'm for it! In fact... screw the turbine. And the cables...

  • No energy is free (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eddi3 (1046882) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:24PM (#21628667) Homepage Journal
    There's no such thing as free energy. What I wonder, is what this is affecting in the long run, and by how much.

    • Re:No energy is free (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LBArrettAnderson (655246) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:29PM (#21628687)
      The actual harnessing of the waves probably won't affect much. It would be much worse to create a man-made harbor instead -- all you're doing is breaking down the waves before they break on the beach. The only negative affects would come with giant metal buckets floating in the water with long rods going down to the bottom... some fish might bump their heads...

      • Laws of Physics (Score:4, Interesting)

        by charlievarrick (573720) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:38PM (#21628711) Homepage

        When wave energy hits a breakwater the energy is dispersed and reflected back into the medium (the ocean). If it hits a a generator it is absorbed and converted into electrical energy. Something like this is taking energy out of a closed system which will have effects. How much? depends on how much energy you take out.

        • Re:Laws of Physics (Score:5, Informative)

          by LBArrettAnderson (655246) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:42PM (#21628735)
          You're right about the energy being dispersed and reflected, but only a very small portion of wave energy goes back into the ocean. Most of it is absorbed by the beach. If this weren't the case the waves would be just as large going back out as they are coming in. Sure, sometimes the waves going back out are visible, but they are much smaller and it doesn't happen very often -- especially on shallow sandy beaches (think how much energy is lost in (very inelastic) collisions and sound (beaches are loud)).

            • Re:Laws of Physics (Score:4, Insightful)

              by CastrTroy (595695) on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:01PM (#21628809) Homepage
              Couldn't the same be said about all the wind turbines we're setting up stopping/slowing the wind?
              • Sure. Covering a substantial quantity of the earth's surface with solar panels would probably have a substantial effect on surface tempurature/weather patterns. So would releasing all the stored carbon energy by lighting everthing on fire.
              • nah, have you never heard of a lazy wind? it doesn't go around you it goes right through you. :-)

                more on topic. if this would reduce wave action there are loads of locations that need very expensive sea defences and we also need to generate power. could we not combine the two by floating these generators off known locations that are been eroded? protect the location and generate power. makes it cheaper to build if you can tap into the others funds.
              • How about nuclear? Fairly cheap, doesn't take the energy away from other systems, and the pollution is concentrated and contained in convenient waste barrels.

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by WindBourne (631190)
                  In fact, few countries have thrown their eggs in one basket, though some have bigger baskets than other. The French currently use 80% nukes. America uses 60% coal. China is currently using something like 90% coal. What I find funny is when ppl say that solar or wind will handle 100% of our needs. The fact that somebody would consider that is incredible. I would like to see America (and any nation) get to the point where the most that they have from one arena is 50%. Why? Because it will force that nation t

            • Re:Actually not. (Score:5, Informative)

              by jcr (53032) <jcr@mac.STRAWcom minus berry> on Sunday December 09 2007, @12:35AM (#21629111) Journal
              Most of the wave energy is reflected back into the ocean

              Most?

              Not hardly. If that were the case, the ocean would be a lot rougher than it is. On a sandy or rocky shore, most of the wave's energy grinds the bits of the beach together, creating the sand, and slightly warming the water (which is offset by evaporation). The only places where you get most of the wave returned to the ocean is where it hits sheer, rocky cliffs.

              The ignorance and lack of common sense on Slashdot never ceases to fucking amaze.

              You amaze yourself?

              -jcr

                  • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                    by hador_nyc (903322)

                    It is a closed system. Just a lot more complex than you think. Most tsunami energy is refracted around islands but those that visibly hit beaches are reflected back. The wave is less coherent but is still there. The major cause of loss of energy in large open ocean waves is the friction of water and air molecules.

                    There's a difference in perspective here. Your perspective is looking at the wave on the macro ocean scale. The people you're arguing with, and the people building this energy plant, are look

        • Since when is the Ocean a closed system? As I understood it the Ocean is a chaotic system, affected by the moon, melting of arctic ice, solar radiation, weather patterns, asteroids, river outpours, and a myriad of other inputs.

        • Something like this is taking energy out of a closed system which will have effects.

          The ocean is a closed system?

    • Anticipated in 1932 SF novel! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by StefanJ (88986) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:41PM (#21628727) Homepage Journal
      Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" is a mind-boggling future history. Very dated and politically/ideologically goofy in its early parts, then increasingly way-out as humanity nearly dies out, evolves, nearly dies out again, moves to a terraformed Venus . . . and so on, until the 17th and final human species dies out on Neptune 2 billions years from now.

      While racing through the history of the cat-like "Third Men," Stapledon notes that one civilization uses tidal power to such an extent that the orbit of the moon is slightly altered!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dunbal (464142)
      What I wonder, is what this is affecting in the long run, and by how much.

            It will affect mean wave height, and reduce coastal erosion...
    • I can't imagine that this would be that much different than wind power. Potentially if they were put into place in strategic places it could subtly reduce the energy that was required to have have hurricanes and cyclones.

    • Re:No energy is free (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tumbleweed (3706) * on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:57PM (#21628991) Homepage
      This is a tidal system being changed, so we have to look at the other things effected by the tidal system, like, the Moon. This will certainly slow down the Moon's orbit around the Earth. Now, what will THAT change? First to my mind is: women's menstruation cycles. It will make it take longer between periods, which is a good thing for sure, but on the other hand, it may also lengthen how long she's experiencing it, which is really, really bad. Not sure whether this falls in the pro or con category.

      Other things: werewolves. Obviously, same deal as menstruation - less frequent, possibly for longer periods (so to speak). I'd invest in the silver industry, you could probably make a tidy profit on this! I won't make the joke about women being related to werewolves (cuz, you know, they get 'bitchy' at that time), because that would just be obvious and tacky, and this IS Slashdot.

      I'm pretty sure vampires are not effected by the Moon, so that's good, though this will not help prevent Dick Cheney attacks, so that's actually disappointing.

      As with other clean power production technologies, the animal rights activists will find a way to claim it hurts migratory birds, and I'm sure to some extent that will be true, though they'll likely be harmed a lot less by this than by the pollution produced by conventional power production.

      With fewer waves hitting the shoes, less sediment will be drawn into the ocean, so they'll be a bit more sparkly-clean looking, which is good, but there's probably some stuff in there that some ocean creature feeds on, so they'll starve, so that'll be bad.

      Most likely a net positive because of the reduced pollution thing, I'm guessing.
    • The heat in the earth's core is powered by the sun. And so is the earth's movement. And the current hurricanes are caused by, guess what? Global warming, which is nothing that the accumulation of... solar power. And the lightning, is powered by the perpetual (yes, perpetual) motion of water vapor (powered by, guess what - the sun!) condensed into raindrops. See all the oil below the Earth's surface? Well, it's nothing but hydrocarbons, which in turn were organic materials created by the food chain which goe
      • Actually I believe some of this energy is from the potential energy locked in the Earth-Moon system. Specifically if you took all the energy out of tides for long enough you would slow down the earth's rotation till it was tidally locked to the moon.
  • Biggest problem with using a 'float height' generation system is the bottom anchor. The seafloor isn't all that sturdy to support constant tugging. Plus, the conservationists will have a point in that the bottom anchors will be disruptive to the seafloor ecology.

    • Lots of structures are anchored to the sea floor. Think of harbours, jetties, oil rigs, bridges and the like. This has been done for thousands of years, so the know how is there.

  • Not this shiat again (Score:5, Funny)

    by TubeSteak (669689) on Saturday December 08 2007, @10:57PM (#21628795) Journal
    Someone needs to create something along the lines of the spam solutions template, [craphound.com] but for new technologies (like wave power or wind farms).

    I'll start:
    (things in bold can be easily replaced)

    Your solution advocates a

    (*) technical ( ) legislative (*) market-based ( ) vigilante

    approach to solving a looming energy problem. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state or country to country before a bad federal or international law was passed.)

    (*) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
    (*) It will be fought by entrenched energy corporations
    (*) It will be fought by ______________
    (*) It will succumb to NIMBY Syndrome
    (*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
    ( ) Technology doesn't work that way
    (*) NIMBY Syndrome will prevent mass deployment

    Specifically, your plan fails to account for:

    (*) Idiots with boats
    ( ) International reluctance to engage in sweeping change
    (*) Technically illiterate politicians
    (*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who vote
    ( ) A lack of support from famous Musicians and Actors
    (*) Conflicting environmental interests

    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

    ( ) The money could be better spent curing cancer
    ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
    been shown practical
    (*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
    (*) Your solution is expensive
    (*) Your solution may be politically infeasible
    ( ) The money could be better spent implementing [other] solution
    ( ) It makes life harder, not easier

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

    (*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
    ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

    You get the idea. Please improve it.
    Not that I'm shitting on wave power, but NIMBY, questions about environmental impact and the fishing & energy industries could seriously crimp any offshore plans.

  • New Wave Power? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dotancohen (1015143) on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:01PM (#21628807) Homepage
    New Wave [wikipedia.org] Power [wikipedia.org] is gonna fucking kick ass. Why hasn't anyone thought of this sooner?
    • Oh, it's been done [youtube.com]. I'm not so sure about the 'awesome' part though.
      • It's not as bad as say, HIM [youtube.com], but I won't be listening to them again. I actually thought is was alright until I discovered that he's saying "kiss my eyes" and not "kiss my ass".

  • Wave and Tidal... (Score:5, Informative)

    by PhotoGuy (189467) on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:06PM (#21628825) Homepage
    It always surprised me that wave and tidal energy weren't harnessed more. Wave energy is really just wind energy thrown into a thick medium which should allow us to extract it in all its concentrated goodness. (And wind, in turn, is caused by solar heating.)

    But what always seemed more dramatic to me, however, are the tides. Especially living in an area with the highest tides in the world, seeing phenomenal amounts of water come in and out with a 6 foot difference, twice a day, always struck me as having a lot more potential (ha ha) than other sources of renewable energy. Effectively harnessing the gravitation pull of our moon through the tides, always seemed to me to be a solution that was too good to be true. There are days when the sea is calm and the wing generators are slower due to lack of wind; coal and oil prices vary wildly. But nothing stops the tides, day or night; the energy available and its cost is 100% predictable, which is a rarity among energy sources.

    In Nova Scotia, we have tidal power plant [nspower.ca] which generates power from the tides. However, it seems to be in a constant state of research, politics, grants, and such, and is fairly small. (Even twenty years ago, it was in this state; instead of referring to it by its name, the "Fundy Tidal Project," people used to refer to it as the "Tidy Fundal Project.") The amount of energy that could be captured from even a small part of the Bay of Fundy [wikipedia.org] is staggering. Yes, it would be quite an engineering feat, but not really anything beyond other megaprojects. It's sad we haven't progressed further in harnessing this.

    • Global calamity (Score:5, Funny)

      by PIPBoy3000 (619296) on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:31PM (#21628891)
      Let me be the first to object to using tidal energy as a "renewable" resource. Don't people know that it will cause the moon to fly away from the Earth at ever increasing speeds? It's not like the energy is free, you know. Call me a lunatic if you'd like, but I refuse to destroy our moon just to let people run their massive new television sets.
      • It doesn't just slow the moon (causing it to fly further away). It also slows down the earth's rotation until it matches the moon's orbital period! Do we really want to tap a power source which will ultimately result in a day being 709 hours long, if not longer as the moon flies further away? Hmm, I suppose if we don't update our labor laws mandating 8-hour workdays it might not be so bad...
      • No Problem... just mine the moon and remove mass to keep it in orbit.
      • Uh, do you realize just how MUCH energy would need to be extracted from such a system to have any actual effects on the moon? You could probably run our entire world electrical use for a billion years before anything happened there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by flyingfsck (986395)
      The problem is synchronizing the generated energy with the grid. Power electronics have now advanced to the point where it is possible to generate power any which way and then convert it electronically to suit the grid. This was not possible before. Consequently the new designs for wave power generation can be much simpler than they would have needed to be in order to maintain synchronization mechanically. For example, these tethered buoys will generate AC at the same frequency as the waves, which is a

    • Re:Wave and Tidal... (Score:4, Informative)

      by LWATCDR (28044) on Saturday December 08 2007, @11:43PM (#21628927) Homepage Journal
      Well for tidal power there are a few problems.
      1. They Bay of Fundy is kind of unusual. There is a lack of sites that are really that good.
      2. Enviromental impact. Tidal areas tend to be very sensitive.
      3. Cost. Except at few places tidal energy isn't very dense. It would require constructing huge systems.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LWATCDR (28044)
          Well I am not for wasting resources. Coastal areas are very sensitive and I think that is a big problem for tidal plants. As far as giving it a try.
          I am all for using a little bit of EVERYTHING. I think that every house built in the southern US should have a small solar panel. Even if it is just 100 Watts. The problem is that right now solar panels are in short supply. But you know if you build 10,000 homes with a small 100 watt panel then at peak production you gain a mega watt of clean power. Geo Therma

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ex-MislTech (557759)
      It has been estimated by scientists that more water flows in and out of the bay of fundy
      every 12.4 hrs than all the rivers in the world.

      If true, it would be more than enough to power all of North America by itself with
      passive underwater Aquanators.( underwater Venturi focused turbines )

      230 billion tonnes of water per day.

      That is some serious generating capacity.

  • Scotlands cool wave tech (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Scotland has all sorts of cool wave projects on the go.

    There's a cool sub-sea wave farm which use the pressure changes to drive a generator.
    http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/wave-power-scotland/ [alternativ...-news.info]

    A huge 'snank' made of several sections, there are hydraulic rams between each section, which drive a generator.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4805076.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    The Isle wave project which uses wave power at the shoreline. When the wave hits it fills a tank, pushing out air to drive a turbine. The first one worke
  • Wasn't that back in the late-70s/early-80s?

    Pure coincidence that I happened to be listening to "The Pleasure Principle" when I checked to see what was happening on Slashdot.

    Rock on Polymoogs!

  • works like a giant shake-up flashlight... (Score:3, Funny)

    by elyk (970302) on Sunday December 09 2007, @04:16AM (#21629795) Homepage
    saves them work - those things tend to be waterproof already.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ceoyoyo (59147)
      Hm... I think about a third of our power is provided by wind. The wind farm is on prairie farmland, with crops growing underneath. Wind power is a little more expensive -- we can choose what mix of it we want in with our coal/gas power. I think it costs around 30% more. Several of the malls in the city have stickers on the doors saying that they're wind powered. The city runs the trains off wind as well. Several places in Europe make us look like wind power amateurs.

      Not everywhere has the wind resourc

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