Wave Energy Project Proposed for Central California

Pacific Gas & Electric is preparing to seek approval to study a future wave energy project located off the California coast near Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The project, which could take years to become operational, would generate as much as 100 megawatts of power, providing permanent non-fossil-fueled electricity for the base in Santa Barbara County. PG&E is expected to seek the permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has been designated as the umbrella agency for wave energy project approval in the nation.

PG&E is already studying a wave energy power station in Humboldt Bay in Northern California and has launched a Web site, http://www.next100.com/, to promote its initiatives.

More

Oregon Wave Power Project Advances

Last Friday morning, New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies announced that it had contracted with Oregon Iron Works to start building what it hopes will become a 10-buoy test system in the waters off Reedsport, Ore.

The first buoy is expected to deploy in a year. Two years after that, nine more buoys should go into the water. The fully deployed, $60 million system is expected to have a capacity of 1.5 megawatts — about half that of a single giant wind turbine (though the waves should be able to provide power around the clock, unlike the intermittent wind). OPT hopes to develop a much larger wave farm nearby that could have as many as 200 buoys.

The project will sit 2.5 miles offshore and connect to a Bonneville Power Administration substation. The project was being paid for with a combination of funds from Ocean Power, as well as federal dollars, Oregon tax breaks and money from the electric company, PNGC Power, which has agreed to purchase the power for its customers in Douglass County, Ore.

More

Offshore Wind Energy in the NE

Steve Lindenberg of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, has prepared a presentation titled Offshore Renewable Energy Future in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Region. Although the presentation focuses on offshore wind energy projects in the NE/Mid-Atlantic, it also covers the potential for both offshore wind projects and marine hydrokinetic (waves and tides) projects along entire U.S. coastline. Potential coastal zone impacts are also discussed.

New Type of Tidal Power Generator

The Deep Green, a new type of tidal power generator developed by Swedish startup Minesto, uses hydrodynamics to harness tidal currents, reportedly making the flow velocity increase 10 times.

Sweden- and UK-based Minesto’s innovation Deep Green “underwater kites” originates from the wind department at Saab Group (the aircraft and military Saab, not the automaker), who started development in 2003. The concept was more suited for water currents than winds, and since the concept was then beyond the Saab Group’s core business, Minesto was formed in 2007.

More

Marine Spatial Planning for Renewable Energy off the West Coast

On October 6 -7, 2009 Surfrider Foundation participated in a meeting on Marine Spatial Planning for Renewable Energy on the West Coast in Seattle, WA. The purpose of the meeting was to formally launch an eighteen month process to develop a 'Coastal Siting Report' for renewable ocean energy projects off the West Coast. The meeting was part of the West Coast Governors Agreement on Ocean Health, and was sponsored by the Nature Conservancy, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Marine Minerals Services (MMS). Invited participants discussed a range of topics including regulatory frameworks, baseline data needs, and decision-support tools. Over the coming months, the process will provide an opportunity to help ensure that renewable ocean energy development minimizes impacts to the nearshore enviroment and existing uses like recreation and fishing. For more information, please visit the website of the West Coast Governors Agreement or contact Pete Stauffer pstauffer@surfrider.org.

Ocean Sciences Meeting, Portland, OR

Ocean Sciences Meeting
February 22-26, 2010, Portland, Oregon

Renewable hydrokinetic energy development in coastal and estuarine environments

Session Description:
Many types of hydrokinetic renewable energy devices are under active development for marine and estuarine systems, typically designed to extract energy from waves, tides, currents, or thermal gradients. These novel technologies will require new emplacements and moorings in aquatic environments with attendant intrusions upon the environment, including acoustic signals, changes to mixing, and electromagnetic fields. Hydrokinetic energy sources are able to provide clean energy, but their effects on the physical and biological environment are not well understood. This session will examine the technologies under development and address the current state of our knowledge on how they will interact with estuarine and coastal, and offshore environments. Contributions are sought that deal with physical effects (current flow, energy reduction, mixing, sand transport) and biological effects (larval transport, entrainment, entanglement, behavior) on all trophic levels.

More info

Ocean Energy Conferences

UMass-Dartmouth's Marine Renewable Energy Center (MREC) is hosting two important ocean energy conferences in September and October.

The first event, entitled 2nd Annual Ocean Energy for NE Conference will take place on Thursday September 17, 2009 in Hyannis, MA. The program is designed to bring together the policy, planning and public interest stakeholders to address issues about ocean energy prospects in NE waters. Speakers from the US Department of Energy, Minerals Management Service, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the MA Office of Coastal Zone Management, Conservation Law Foundation, Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Collaborative and many more will break up into facilitated panels to discuss how they view ocean energy development opportunities and concerns. The morning will be topped off with a delicious lunch and a wrap-up of next steps. Attendees from government, municipalities, the public at large, academia and industry are welcome to attend. A detailed agenda and registration information are available at www.mrec.umassd.edu.

The second event, 1st Annual MREC Technical Conference is a conference dedicated to marine renewable energy technologies. It will take place on Thursday October 15, 2009 at the Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center (ATMC) in Fall River, Massachusetts. The purpose of this conference is to advance the science of ocean generation of electricity and to assist the industry in finding new technology for commercialization. The line up of technology based presentations will add to the technical literature available for ocean power generation. With sessions dedicated to ocean wave energy conversion devices, tidal in stream conversion devices and offshore wind generation systems and platform design the conference will provide a forum for researchers to present new technologies. There will also be a discussion of the methodology and results of site survey work. This work is crucial to pin pointing exact locations where there is a consistent power resource and for characterizing the seafloor for foundation and/or mooring installation. To submit an abstract and to register to attend please visit www.mrec.umassd.edu.