Literally Catching the Sustainable Energy Wave
- Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 19:52
- Educational Articles, Green Global News, Green Investing, Green/Environmental, Sustainable Energy, Who's Who
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Annette von Jouanne a professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University is pioneering an ingenious way to generate clean, renewable electricity from the sea using wave energy buoys. These buoys or wave-energy converters ride up and down with each passing swell generating electricity 24 hours day as they are not dependent on the sun that is only more or less directly overhead eight hours a day, or the wind which has a tendency to diminish as the sun sets.
It is estimated that wave-energy converters could fuel almost 7% of energy requirements for the USA or something along the lines of 150 million barrels of oil or enough power for 23 million typical American homes. Consequently that is approximately the same amount of energy currently produced by all the hydroelectric dams in the USA.
The most recent designs consist of two main components, a thick coil of copper wire, which is anchored to the seafloor. The second component is a magnet attached to a float that moves up and down with the waves. Electricity is created when the magnet bobs up and down, along the stationary coil of copper wire.
Columbia Power Technologies, a renewable energy company that has supported von Jouanne’s research, plans to install a buoy generating between 100 and 500 kilowatts of electricity off the coast of Oregon in the next two to three years.
2 Comments on “Literally Catching the Sustainable Energy Wave”
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Keep posting stuff like this i really like it.
Finally someone that wants to take advantage of wave action in the us, It’s been going on in europe for years with wave generated vertical turbine blow wells. My complaint is we ignore the other obvious twice a day tidal weight from the moon. Trap vast areas of water, then spin gen’s with mechanical force like the dutch sea dike walls. use force in opposing latttitudes to make/while gathering… It’s a no brainer. These days (well since tesla) with AC transmission we could power large areas easily… if the moon stops then we have more to worry about than electricity.