22 Ocean Wave Power
Canary Media
Many have tried to harness the ocean’s power to generate electricity, resulting in several embarrassing failures and little tangible success. Startup Eco Wave Power hopes to transcend that tempestuous legacy with a radically simple idea: capture the ocean’s energy closer to shore.
This approach sacrifices the greater energy potential of larger offshore waves, but it avoids the destruction such waves wreak on machinery. Eco Wave Power installs and services its equipment on breakwaters or seawalls, eliminating the need for ships and divers.
Commercializing dockside wave energy technology that has supplied power to the grid in Gibraltar for six years.
The ocean packs a punch. The massive quantities of kinetic energy delivered in the form of waves could easily power the whole world, according to the folks who bother to tally that sort of hypothetical. But that presupposes that humans can tame Poseidon’s chaos.
Attempts to capture this vast supply of energy have been the undoing of many well-meaning technological ventures.
In 2014, Oceanlinx attempted a 12-month demonstration of a 1-megawatt wave power unit in Australian waters. Much of the AUD $6.6 million project was funded by the Australian government, which resorted to a cryptic use of passive voice to document the outcome:
Complications were experienced during transportation of the device, 24 hours into the operation. The device was set down in shallow waters off the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. As a result of the transportation complications, the device was damaged beyond repair.Scottish company Pelamis tried for a decade and managed to install a giant “sea-snake” contraption off of Scotland and in a short-lived “wave park” off the coast of Portugal in 2008. The 2.25-megawatt Portugal project cost $12.9 million and had to be pulled out of the water almost immediately due to technical problems. Pelamis ultimately ran out of money in 2014.
In the U.S., Verdant Power has been trying to wring tidal energy out of the relatively mild waters of the East River since 2002. Early versions of the company’s device suffered from machinery being damaged by the very current it was supposed to be catching. As of summer 2021, this company had a three-turbine demonstration unit sending power to the New York City grid.
The problem here, from a business standpoint, is that the output of a wave power generator isn’t anything special — it’s clean electricity, which can be produced cheaply by wind or solar plants.
The floaters that Eco Wave Power installs are cheap but sturdy. Their bobbing motion pumps hydraulic fluid into a collector tank onshore. The collector releases the pressurized fluid to turn a motor and generate electricity. If a major storm comes, the floaters lift out of the waves to avoid damage.
Instead of spending millions on an initial grid-connected project, Eco Wave Power built its Gibraltar unit for $450,000.
Offshore designs typically need to anchor to the ocean floor, which creates an environmental disturbance. Braverman envisions her technology clinging to the miles of seawalls and breakwaters that protect harbors and coastal cities.
“We don’t take prime real estate, we don’t take beaches, we don’t take surf zones,” Braverman said. “You’re not going to put a hotel on the breakwater.”
Those human-built structures already exist, and many will likely be expanded in coming years to fortify against rising sea levels.