We live on a water planet. Roughly 71 percent of the Earth is covered in the stuff, and it’s constantly in motion — tides surging rhythmically; powerful currents coursing beneath the surface; waves rolling across oceans and crashing against continents. All that motion produces mind-boggling quantities of kinetic energy, just a stone’s throw from some… Keep reading →
Doesn’t anyone remember LIMPET? Agucadoura? Despite what you might have read, the Carnegie Wave Energy project at Garden Island, off Perth, Australia, is not the world’s first grid-connected wave power station, nor the first grid-connected wave power array. The 500-kilowatt-rated LIMPET – that’s Land Installed Marine Power Energy Transmitter – commissioned in spring 2001 on… Keep reading →
It’s been a long, hard winter for wave energy, with reports of failure and retrenchment streaming out of Europe. But, hey, it’s still summer Down Under, and Australia has delivered a rare sunny wave story. The question is whether the Carnegie Wave Energy system near Perth – it officially began piping energy to the grid… Keep reading →
Pelamis, long a leading player in the wave energy industry, has gone “into administration,” akin to Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The fall of the Scottish company, announced on Friday, was a blow to Scotland and a sign of the tremendous challenges wave developers face – but it might also signal a necessary winnowing of the incipient… Keep reading →
Wave energy – recently characterized by one leading academic in the field as being “in kindergarten” compared to fossil fuels – isn’t about to graduate to the big time, but the effort to build a meaningful industry in the U.S. could advance several grades in the next few years. Not one, not two, but at… Keep reading →
A novel approach to generating wave energy moved forward in Oregon on Thursday with the launch of the M3 Wave APEX, an experimental device that hopes to beat the bobbers – devices that generate power through mechanical action at the ocean surface – by sitting stationary at the bottom of the sea. Essentially, it hopes… Keep reading →
Thank your lucky stars, Australia. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) left town before too much damage could be done. Meanwhile, a message to U.S. wave energy fans: Don’t lose faith. Oregon, which also suffered a big OPT disappointment, seems to be bouncing back just fine. First the Australia story: OPT last week pulled the plug on… Keep reading →
A US company aims to break into Europe’s wave power industry, despite fierce competition in the marine technology market.
“Wave energy can help because it is one of the few vastly available renewable resources that can act like baseload power. The trick is you have to deliver a device that is survivable [and] maintainable in one of the harshest environments but … can also deliver that competitive cost,” Reenst Leseman, CEO of Columbia Power Technologies, recently said. Keep reading →
Harnessing tidal power for clean energy has recently taken a huge step forward in the UK, the world’s leading region for development of this important new renewable resource. The MeyGen Tidal Array Project is fast moving toward the final construction of its demonstration phase, which will be the first time that underwater turbines sited together… Keep reading →
Carnegie Mellon University recognized the University of Pennsylvania’s DR-Advisor team as the top winner at its inaugural Allegheny Region Cleantech University Prize in March. Dr. Grace M. Bochenek, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (left) and Dr. Jared Cohon, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation (right) presented the winnings to Professor… Keep reading →
