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Catch a Wave . . . for Clean Electricity
| Article
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20293 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1992 |
2,710 Words |
| Author
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Gail Dutton
Gail Dutton is an independent writer specializing in science
and technology. She lives in Southern California. |
A good early morning surf report sends hundreds of California surfers into the ocean with hopes of catching some waves and some good vibrations. Oceanographers, catching some waves of their own, are looking for another sort of thrill--the thrill of harnessing the energy in those waves to create electricity.
The idea, and the patented devices, have been around for at least a century. Early developers found their niches by using wave energy to compress air to blow whistles on navigational buoys and, more recently, to light those buoys.
The power of waves crashing against the shore has inspired some 1,500 inventors throughout the world during the past century to devote time and money to learn to harness that energy and to patent their devices. Desalination was a popular goal. With the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, modern interest surged. Today, concerns over global warming--accentuated by burning fossil fuels--is causing another wave of excitement
Interest is growing internationally, and countries are funding wave energy research because "they don't like to be at the whim of the oil industry," according to David Skelly, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. "In the United States," adds Charles White, an environmental specialist with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), "there has been no central effort for ocean-wave energy engineering." Wave energy research has been left mainly to individual entrepreneurs.
Applications
"Wave energy can't replace fossil fuel plants; it can only supplement them," according to White. In 1991, wave energy conversion devices generated less than 0.5 megawatts (MW)--a tiny amount--of energy for the worldwide power grid. The operating plants included a 75-kilowatt (kW) oscillating water column type of device on Scotland's Isle of Islay that takes advantage of a natural gully to focus waves toward it, and a 350 kW tapered channel type of unit at Toftestalen, Norway--the dominant plant at the time. Two similar devices are being constructed in Java and Australia, to generate 1.5 MW each.
In Ireland, a wave energy plant to desalinate sea water is being designed by Michael McCormick, an ocean engineer with the U.S. Naval Academy. "It's about to take off and should be available commercially in two to three years," he says. "Wave energy devices would make sense on many of the approximately
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