First Commercial Wave Farm | Green Energy News

May 15, 2005 – Vol.10 No.8

FIRST COMMERCIAL WAVE FARM.

Ocean front land owners concerned about preserving their expansive - often expensive - view of the ocean will likely put up fight against the construction of offshore wind farms in their view, even though the turbines might be only an inch tall on the horizon.

Sometime they’ll win in court and the windfarm won’t get built.

But there are other ways to harness the power of offshore wind that probably can’t be seen from shore - ocean wave energy. And that technology has suddenly become commercial.

Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) of Edinburgh, Scotland has received its first order for its Pelamis P-750 Wave Energy Converters. The company will deliver three of the 750-kilowatt devices for the first phase of an ocean wave farm being developed by Enersis off the coast of Portugal.

For a total capacity of 2.25 megawatts, the wave farm, to be built 5 kilometers off shore (about 3 miles) will generate enough power for up to 1500 homes. The project is valued at EUR 8 million ($10 million).

OPD expects Enersis to eventually buy up to 30 wave energy converters, up to 20 megawatts capacity, in 2006 if the first units operate as promised.

Pelamis ocean energy converters are a series floating cylinders connected together at power conversion modules. (They look like huge, red, floating snakes.) As the cylinders roll in the waves hydraulic rams, sliding at the connecting joints of the power conversion modules force hydraulic fluid to run hydraulic motors which, in turn, run electric generators. Power is cabled to shore.

Each 750-kilowatt Pelamis snake is 120 meters long and 3.5 meters in diameter (394 feet by 12) and is moored to the ocean bottom.

The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter has been chosen by the internationally-respected Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as the best and only wave energy device currently recommended for deployment off the U.S. coast.

Enersis is a Portuguese renewable energy developer with 500 megawatts of wind capacity and 100 megawatts of microhydro in its portfolio. Another 500 megawatts of wind capacity is being developed by the company. Visit Ocean Power Delivery at http://www.oceanpd.com/ .