Deep Sea News : Electric Wave Park

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Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.

Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.

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Electric Wave Park

Category: Conservation & Environment
Posted on: January 7, 2008 8:19 PM, by CR McClain

A new blog I discovered, and seem strangely drawn to, is Information Junk, the findings of a San Franciscan librarian. Via IJ, I see that PG&E has agreed to buy power from a "wave park". No it's not a water park with lots of tourists creating energy through unspeakable means. Rather it's eight buoys bobbing in the water 2 1/2 miles offshore of Northern California, each buoy generating electricity as it rises and falls with the waves. The array, schedule for completion in 2012, will produce enough wattage to light 1,500 hundreds homes or 5 during Christmas.

Find more posts in: Physical Science Environment

Comments

Damn but that diagram is unhelpful. It has three captions:
(1) I think "piston" is more descriptive than "pump". And the piston stays still while the rest of the housing (filled with air at the top) moves up and down with the waves, rather than what they show (which is the relative motion).

(2) Seawater does not "compress" -- it is put under pressure. I would have said that the piston forces seawater up and down through the turbine.

(3) Seems okay. That makes 1 for 3.

The youtube videos are pretty cool though.

Posted by: kevin | January 7, 2008 9:19 PM

I'm not an expert on how ocean waves this distance from shore are generated --- is it mostly tidal forces or wind? Assuming it's tidal, this is a generator which extracts useful gravitational energy from the Earth-Moon system (as opposed to a waterfall which only extracts it from Earth). Cool!

Posted by: John | January 9, 2008 4:24 PM