New Effort To Capture Energy From The Sea

By James Donahue

A new British based energy company is attempting to develop technology to capture the power of the seas following the failure of Finavera to successfully plant floating generators off the Oregon coast.

The web site Earth2Tech reports that OreCon is raising financial backing to build and anchor a 40-meter-wide floating generator designed to capture the power of rising and falling waves.

The company is designing a steel buoy that will be tethered some four miles offshore. When working, and it if works as planned, it is expected to generate 1.5 megawatts of power, just by catching the natural action of the sea.

Unlike the upright and whirling blades of the buoys attempted by Finavera, this new generator is said too be an innovation on a traditional wave power structure that uses the natural force of the waves to keep it floating above the water.

The Finavera buoy, a 40-ton device named AquaBuOY that was tested earlier off the Western U.S. coastline, sank. Thus the research continues, with engineers working hard on solving all of the problems connected with manufacturing the technology needed to successfully harness the natural power of the sea.

They are battling a massive body of water that is so changeable in its nature that it can destroy almost anything made by man, yet its natural force can generate enough power to light up the world.

OreCon and Finavera are not alone in this research. Other groups like the Seattle-based Hydrovolts, and Pelamis Wave Power in the UK also are involved in the work.

The stakes are high, but so is the demand for new and green sources of energy.