Motoring Across The Puget Sound, Reenst Lesemann spots a yellow, barnacle-encrusted contraption bobbing on the wind-whipped waters off Seattle. Called the SeaRay, it’s the prototype of a device that Lesemann’s startup, Columbia Power Technologies, is betting can help transform wave energy from a long-running science experiment into the next renewable energy bonanza. “I have never seen a multibillion-dollar market where the customers are literally waiting on the technology,” says Lesemann, a former venture capitalist.
Indeed. A new government-sponsored study has found that the oceans surrounding the US contain enough energy to potentially supply more than half the nation’s electricity demand. Even with the limits of today’s technology, scientists concluded, there’s sufficient recoverable energy offshore—some 1,170 tera-watt hours a year in all—to keep a third of the country humming. More energy crashes annually onto the West Coast, for instance, than California uses in a year.
And now the reality check: 5 megawatts. That’s how much electricity—enough to light about 4,000 American homes—is being currently generated by wave energy worldwide despite years of work by a plethora of start-ups and many millions of dollars in government support, according to research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
What happened? Before the financial crash, the great green tech boom unleashed a rush of startups and speculators staking claims on federal waters to build massive wave farms, while in Europe governments, including Portugal and Scotland, placed big bets on wave energy. But making green off blue power soon proved to be so much California dreaming as plans for West Coast wave energy arrays sank under opposition from surfers, fishermen and local residents.
Even California regulators, who had green-lighted Pacific Gas & Electric’s contract to buy electricity from a solar power station that would orbit the Earth, balked at the utility’s deal with a wave energy start-up, concluding the technology was too risky. And when companies finally began deploying their first wave energy generators in Europe, punishing ocean conditions took their toll as some devices broke down or failed to perform as expected.
The PowerBuoy generates 150 kilowatts of electricity and resembles a giant vertical dumbbell anchored to the sea floor. The top portion of the 115-foot-long device floats on the ocean’s surface, and as it bobs among the waves the motion pushes pistons to create mechanical energy to drive an electrical generator. The electricity is routed through cables to the power grid onshore.
(This story appears in the 16 March, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)