Wave Power and Texas

MKe, "Another form of renewable power steps up."



From article, "Wave Power Desalination Plant Coming Soon to Texas

(This month, the state of Texas granted its first-ever offshore lease for a wave-powered energy system to Renew Blue's Seadog Pump. The system, which will be used to power a desalination plant for ocean water, is more than halfway constructed; its executives expect it to be up and running by the winter. PM sat down with Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Renew Blue, to talk about how this technology works, whether wave power will ever be competitive with wind and solar and why it has failed to be successful so far.)The Seadog Pump is essentially a mechanical conversion device. What we're doing is taking the energy resonant in the waves by having it flow through our device. When it flows through it, we're able to set up a circumstance where we can convert the wave's potential into mechanic energy. Once it's mechanical energy, we use that energy to pump water. At this point, the system is just a pump that is fueled by the waves.

Then we take that energy and pump the water to an elevated area--to the shore, or a platform like we're planning to do in the Gulf of Mexico. Once you've got the water captured, you can run it from the capture point and store it on natural cliffs, like those in California or Oregon or on shorelines in the European Union. Now, you've got pumped hydroelectric storage. When we can store seawater at an elevated level, we then have the ability to release it when demand is there--and now you've got electricity to match demand.

The wind lease from the state of Texas gives us enough space to put in an 18-pump system. This takes up 75 feet by 150 feet. It's a very small piece that is enough to do our demonstration. It's kind of like the movie Kevin Costner did, Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. We have to have an ability to showcase to the world that we've got a solution using waves because waves traditionally have not had much success. There have been 2000 patents filed over the past 100 years and we don't even have a city of 40,000 people running on that highly dense fuel source. To me, that's a failed sector.)