There’s some interesting places where waves can deliver a lot of wealth
Something happened. Wave energy has been in the dumps for years. We observed this with great wonder, because as an energy source it is highly reliable and predictable. Yet companies like Pelamis went bankrupt. OceanLinx met the same fate.
Pelamis produced long tubes that turned wave action into hydraulic pressure.
Oceanlinx developed a system shown above that turns wave action into air pressure to drive a wind turbine.
Bobbing ‘shipping containers’, what could they cost..
Below we see how the Werpo/Blackbird system works, actually quite similar to the Pelamis system, but with different wave catchers, which have to be tied to something solid.
“Blackbird International Corporation (OTC: BBRD), a global leader in renewable sea wave energy technology(WERPO), is pleased to announce that it signed an agreement with the government of Guinea-Bissau for the development of a 500MW sea wave power plant along the coastline of Guinea-Bissau at a value of $500 Million Dollars.”
Now something seems to have changed, because suddenly there’s a $500 mln Wave energy project in Africa. Half a billion USD doesn’t usually get spend on immature technology. So this is a sign wave energy is here, and here to stay. The power from the Guinee=Bissau project will be a bit more expensive than from solar, $0.10 per kWh, but the nature of Wave energy is different, much more constant and available at night. And 500 MW is the size of a bigger modern coal power plant.
“Mr. Ovadia had dreamed about producing energy from sea waves over 40 years ago and in 1997 received the first patent for the system, approved by the U.S. Patent Office. Since then additional patents have been filed with applications for worldwide use, including many upcoming patents pending.” (werpo.us)
You can see by the video above that the Werpo design is pretty old. It also seems that the patents on some of his systems have expired, although Werpo now claims it owns them.
“WERPO aims to build power stations to generate electricity from ocean waves in every region in the world through local partners. Power plants built according to our technology are environmentally friendly and are built to last. The systems are easy to build, require little space on land and can be modified to fit on any coastal terrain with ease.”
When this plant is completed no bank can argue that this technology is not mature anymore (which they will try to do to protect fossil fuel interests that generate most of their cashflow). Hopefully this will make the technology mainstream and lower cost even more. A nice aspect of the Werpo design is that it can be build in less developed countries. Perhaps the hydraulics are something to import, but the welding of steel happens everywhere.
Yep, we could have build this 40 damn years ago!
In Norway a Wave energy plant gone live recently, build by Havkraft
