http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11333&Itemid=223Buoys = Power?
Written by Phil Bailey, Political/Environmental Commentator
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Someday, sooner than we may think, something we take for granted may be the ideal alternative source of energy. What could that be? The sun of course, solar energy. Nope. Wind. There’s plenty of it. No. Something else (not that solar and wind aren’t part of the picture). Think aqua, think buoys. Buoys you say? Those things that bob up and down in the water? They’re going to generate electricity? How much? A kilowatt a month? Is this Earth sense or earth senseless? Come along for a quick ride.
First, let’s meet George Taylor. He and his partner designed the first flat-panel liquid-crystal displays. (Today that basic technology is used in everything from televisions and computer screens to cell phone displays.) They sold that start-up company to Fairfield which later became a company we know as Intel. George, a former surfer boy, has been working on wave power for almost 20 years. His company is Ocean Power. Taylor had to take the company public on the London Stock Exchange because the US exchange wasn't interested. (Britain is far ahead of other countries when it comes to funding and research in wave power, thanks to more than a decade of generous government subsidies, capital grants, and a long, wave-tossed coastline.) Ocean Power's October 2003 IPO raised $40 million, at a time when interest in the U.S. was almost nil.
Last year Ocean Power installed a 40-kilowatt version in 100 feet of water nearly a mile off the Hawaiian coast to provide supplemental power for the U.S. Navy. That project - a contract worth about $7 million - is still expanding. Five more buoys are to be installed, each progressively larger, in a field that will ultimately generate as much as one megawatt of electricity, or enough to power as many as 1,000 homes.
Next year, 2 miles off the Oregon coast, his latest invention will debut. This is where it starts to get seriously interesting.
The buoys used in the Reedsport, Ore., project will be Taylor's biggest yet - 30 feet wide, weighing 50 tons and capable of generating 150 kilowatts each. Each buoy houses a massive float that moves up and down like a piston as a wave passes. (As with an iceberg, most of the buoy remains below the water, with only about nine feet projecting above the surface.) The piston's motion drives a generator near the top of the buoy that creates an electric current, which is then piped back to shore via undersea cables.
Remember, these guys are a mile to two offshore, not visible and they’ve already done studies that show no problems with the fishing or crabbing industry. Think about it for just a moment. Know anyplace else that has a coastline with waves?
For his part, Taylor is still thinking bigger. By the year 2010 he plans to have a 100-ton, 37-foot-wide buoy that could generate 500 kilowatts, a size that he calls the "magic number," because that's the point at which substantial economies of scale kick in. An array of 40 buoys that size, linked together, could generate electricity at prices significantly less than that of a typical coal-burning power station, and far less than the price at plants that burn more expensive fuels such as natural gas. Clean electricity that cheap could be used to desalinate seawater, split water molecules to make hydrogen for fuel-cell cars, or provide inexpensive power for other ambitious, energy-hungry projects. Taylor's voice drops off as he dreams of the possibilities. "It's a very exciting thing to come late in one's career," he says "It keeps me young." Did I mention George is 72 years old.
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