Sunday, July 30th, 2006 in Renewable Energy by GreenMonkey
We have posted about wave energy a few times in the past, but it has always been on the drawing boards or concept models. Now we have the real thing, the Pelamis. The Pelamis is being deployed by Ocean Power Delivery LTD, and it works via hydraulics, to capture the energy of ocean waves. The first version was a test version in Scotland and now they have deployed them off the cost of Portugal.
The project in Portugal will be rated at 2.25 Mega Watts.
Will wave energy work / Here are some of the details behind the technology
Ocean waves represent a considerable renewable energy resource. Waves are generated by the wind as it blows across the ocean surface. They travel great distances without significant losses and so act as an efficient energy transport mechanism across thousands of kilometres. Waves generated by a storm in mid-Atlantic will travel all the way to the coast of Europe without significant loss of energy.
All of the energy is concentrated near the water surface with little wave action below 50 metres depth. This makes wave power a highly concentrated energy source with much smaller hourly and day-to-day variations than other renewable resources such as wind or solar. Conveniently, the seasonal variation of wave power closely follows the trend for electricity consumption in Western Europe.
The western seaboard of Europe offers an enormous number of potential sites. The most promising sites are off the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Norway.
There is sufficient energy breaking on the UK shoreline to power the country three times over. However, it is not practical to recover all of this energy. The economically recoverable resource for the UK alone has been estimated to be 87TWh per year, or ~25% of current UK demand.
In the past five years there has been a resurgence of activity in wave energy, as the huge resource potential has been recognised. A number of developers in different countries have either installed or are about to install full-scale prototypes with funds in excess of 70 million euros have been committed to these installations.
There are many promising sites around the world; any site on the map shown with an average wave power level of over 15kW per metre has the potential to generate wave energy at competitive prices. Many countries recognise this potential and are seriously looking at how to exploit it.
The Future for the company: 13 million in new investment
It is anticipated that future `wave farm’ projects would consist of an arrangement of interlinked multi-machines connected to shore by a single subsea cable. A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh.
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