Oregon is first U.S. site for a wave-power farm

The search for clean, renewable energy is turning toward the ocean, but not without some waves of skepticism. Construction has begun off Oregon on what would be the nation's first commercial wave-energy farm, said Sean O'Neill, president of the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, a Maryland-based trade association that promotes marine energy. It is planned to supply energy to about 400 homes.



"On a national perspective, it's great news. They're making tremendous progress," he said. Wave power draws from the energy of ocean surface waves, according to Phil Pellegrino, spokesman for New Jersey-based developer Ocean Power Technologies, which is developing the project.

A float on a buoy rises and falls with the waves, driving a plunger up and down, he explained. The plunger is connected to a hydraulic pump that converts the vertical movement into rotary motion, driving an electrical generator. Electricity produced is sent to shore over a submerged cable, he said. The first buoy will measure 150 feet tall by 40 feet wide, weigh 200 tons and cost $4 million, Pellegrino said. Nine more buoys are planned to deploy at a site in Reedsport, Ore., by 2012, at a total cost of $60 million, he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2010-02-16-wave-energy_N.htm

and I've wondered why it took so long to get the technology right.

EDIT:

"There's also controversy about impact on the marine environment. Oregon fishers and crabbers worry the project will hurt their livelihoods.

"What wave energy will do for the first time is render an area of the ocean closed off. There will be no-fish zones," said Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. Crabbers must keep their pots away from underwater transmission lines, Furman said."

And this is a bad thing? If there are areas where the ocean life can live and grow unmolested, it only strengthens the take in the areas immediately adjacent to them. With fisheries collapsing all over the world, having protected places enables the recovery of species that are being fished out at alarming rates.

this is just the next step.

It may take decades more, but there is a great deal of promise there.

This isn't brain surgery, it is basic engineering of known technologies for a well understood environment. Within 5 years there will be available a variety of options to harness different types of wave/current/tidal energy sources.

It isn't brain surgery, it's engineering... but it will take years before they work the kinks out and likely a couple decades or more before anything aproaching "full deployment." Claiming that they are "known technologies" and a "well understood environment" doesn't make it so.

known technologies for a well understood environment

Have you already forgotten the discussion about the massive wind generator that will be tested for a couple years on land before being tested at sea? That was a far more refined technology (just a larger version of an existing idea). There are tens of thousands of wind turbines in existence.

Within 5 years there will be available a variety of options to harness different types of wave/current/tidal energy sources.

There are already a "variety of options"... but we most certainly will not see substantial build-out within the next five years. And Jacobson's plan to have 720,000 of them in the next 20 years is beyond "pie in the sky."

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What a surprise to have you reply with a blanket statement that I'm wrong... followed by precisely zero evidence to back up that claim.

I'm shocked. < /sarcasm>

Didn't you want to spam Jacobson on here somewhere?

Within 5 years there will be a variety of wind/current/tidal systems ready for the market.

Nope. Not is "ready for market" means anything legitimate. Not if it means that they are economically viable (i.e. produce power for less than the price they can sell it on the open market)... or even comparable to more mature wind/solar options.

Five years? They've been working on these ideas for decades and are only now trying to start the first TINY scale production plans. If you've ever seen ANY similar ramp up, you would know that five years isn't even close.

Pop quiz. How long did it take to go from "Solar one" to "Solar two" to "Solar tres" ?

This isn't even the wave-energy equivalent of Solar two... and we have at least another decade before Solar Tres-type plants are "ready for market"

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No answer at all, eh?

THink anyone here is unable to guess why that is?

Come on... how long did it take to go from Solar One to Solar Two? And how long did it then take to move on to Solar Tres (not yet complete)?

And how long is it from that to a day when similar plants are a viable option on the market?

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So really a federally recognized sovereign tribal nation has been ahead of States.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004085547_waveenergy21m.html
http://www.allbusiness.com/services/business-services/3905458-1.html
http://www.lawofrenewableenergy.com/2008/05/articles/oceanwave-energy/update-on-makah-bay-wave-energy-project/
http://hinmrec.hnei.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/EPRI-Wave-Energy-Tech-Summary.pdf
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-21-092.asp

Tribes in Maine and Alaska are also looking at similar projects.
http://www.ccthita.org/pdf/TribalEnergyPlan07212008.pdf

They've been in the permitting process for some time... They haven been "doing this" for some time.

A number of similar concepts (about a dozen) are at various stages of the multiple-year permit process.

I mean this picture is so not useful:



Tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of plastic floats hanging off the shore until they break apart and end up ensconsed in the sand or float out into the gyre:






So called "renewable energy" is not renewable, not sustainable, is junk consumerism and wishful thinking and has a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very big mass/energy density problem.

And nobody talks about them as a problem.

Can you provide any evidence that any of your photos are in any way related to this topic? They look like trash washed ashore.