Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

 “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love,” wrote the French philosopher and priest Teilhard de Chardin.

If he was right, then we can only hope—for the sake of love and other more mundane renewable energies—that Atlantis Resources Corp., a developer of tidal current turbines based in London and Singapore, makes good on its new announcement of the “largest and most powerful tidal power turbine ever built,” the AK1000.

Designed to harness power from the swift ebb and flow of tidal currents, the device looks like a squat wind turbine with two 18-foot-diameter rotors. That seems puny--only one-twentieth the size of some terrestrial turbines, but the company points out that a small tidal rotor goes a long way since water is 832 times denser than air.  

Each turbine has a power rating of one megawatt and can generate enough electricity for 1,000 homes, the company says. Atlantis hopes to install one later this year off the coast of Scotland at the European Marine Energy Centre.

Such relatively small devices, one hopes, should be cheaper to build and take up less room than giant wind turbines. And because the tides are driven by lunar and solar gravity, they should be much more stable sources of power than the wind. Last but not least, they won’t block anyone’s view or offend their esthetic sensibilities.

A recent report by Frost & Sullivan estimated the potential energy from tidal generation worldwide at 700 terrawatt-hours per year, or more than one-sixth of all U.S. electricity consumption. However, a survey by the Electric Power Research Institute found only a handful of potentially suitable sites in the United States.

Despite its promise in some parts of the world, tidal power is still very much an experimental technology. Operating reliably in a harsh, corrosive marine environment is an enormous challenge. A 1 MW turbine installed by OpenHydro in the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia—which has some of the highest tides in the world—broke earlier this year and will have to be removed at great expense.

Previously, a related technology project by Verdant Power, designed to harness the energy of New York City’s East River currents, also came to a bad end when its turbine blades broke. A number of wave power devices have also proven no match for the fury of Poseidon.

On the other hand, the Marine Current Turbines SeaGen project in Northern Ireland recently passed the two million kilowatt-hours mark after two years in operation. The company calls it “the world’s first and only commercial scale tidal stream energy turbine.”

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Market researchers are great synthesizers, but sometimes you have to take their claims with a few grains of salt. A perfect case in point is a recent report by Frost & Sullivan, which declares that “the market potential for the wave (power) industry is about $1 trillion worldwide.” 

Given that the current size of the commercial wave industry is roughly zero dollars, that’s a bold estimate to say the least. It appears to be based not on commercial realities, but on an extrapolation of the physical energy potentially extractable from the world’s oceans, which the report summary estimates at up to 6 million gigawatt-hours per year. (That's about equal to the energy in all the oil consumed worldwide in 2006.) 

Frost & Sullivan’s news release goes on to say, with breaktaking confidence, that “ocean (wave and tidal) technology is much more reliable and predictable than other kinds of renewable energies, such as wind or solar. Coupled with vast worldwide resources . . .  ocean energy may be the key to answer the world's escalating energy needs.”

More reliable than wind or solar? Hardly. As the news release admits farther down, “The extremely harsh weather conditions of the ocean require the technology to be very robust. Pelamis Wave Power has halted its 2.5 MW wave farm in Portugal indefinitely. The reason cited for this is water leakage, which has severely affected their buoyancy device.”

Or consider this news item from GreenTechMedia last month: 

The prospect of extracting nearly unlimited renewable energy from the tides suffered a blow this month when OpenHydro announced it would pull its experimental underwater turbine from the Bay of Fundy. . . . Last week, the Irish company said it would yank the turbine out by October after an underwater video discovered two broken blades. . . . The setback underscores how difficult it is to operate in the corrosive, storm-plagued marine environment. The $10 million, 1 MW project had hoped to show that a first-of-its-kind tidal plant could be built to supply as much as 25 percent of Nova Scotia's electricity.

When I queried the Frost & Sullivan analyst by email, it turned out that what he really meant was that ocean energy, not technology, is more reliably available than wind or solar energy. That’s a rather big difference.

Fortunately, the ocean power industry is making progress despite inevitable setbacks. As noted in NEXT100, PG&E is promoting pilot testing of new technology off the California coast through its WaveConnect™ program. And in Scotland, the government has just awarded millions of dollars in funding to five wave and tidal energy demonstration projects. The industry is also being supported by the European Marine Energy Research Centre.

As the Frost & Sullivan study rightly notes, in contrast to its optimistic flights of rhetoric, “The future of wave and tidal energy depends heavily on financial funding from public, private, and government entities. Deployment of wave and tidal technology will not be easily achievable due to large initial installation cost.” And even once the technology is proven, challenges will remain of moving to the next phase of commercialization.

All that said, unlocking the power of ocean waves and tides is a goal well worth pursuing. The energy potential is staggering and the resource lies near population centers that need it. Above all, ocean power is clean and renewable. So let’s go for it—with determination, not hype.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Nine European nations plan to build a wind power "supergrid" in the North Sea west of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. The plan, announced as the United Nations climate meetings began in Copenhagen, includes Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Britain and Ireland. The move did not allocate any funds but a plan for moving forward should be crafted next year.

Ocean Power Technologies will build the first of 10 wave power buoys to place off the Oregon coast beginning next year. If the project succeeds, it would be the first U.S. commercial-scale wave energy farm. Ocean Power has contracted with Oregon Iron Works to build the first buoy, which will be tethered to the ocean floor 2.5 miles off the coast. Ten buoys would have capacity of 1.5 megawatts and generate power through a Bonneville Power Administration substation for 750 homes.

Atlantis Resources Corp. will test the world's biggest tidal energy turbine at the European Marine Energy Center test site off the Orkney Islands in the North Sea near Scotland. The 1-megawatt turbine is the height of a 5-story building and has rotors 18 meters in diameter. The test is in preparation for Scotland's plan to tap the ocean's energy to power about 500,000 homes by 2020.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

If Jimmy Buffett were writing a theme song for PG&E's renewable energy department, his lyrics might read, "Mother, Mother Ocean: I have heard you call. I wanted to pull the power from your waters since I was three feet tall."

Looking to add to its diverse power mix, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has just signed an agreement with the U.S. Air Force that will let the utility investigate the feasibility of a wave energy project off the coast of northern Santa Barbara County near Vandenberg Air Force Base. The project is part of the PG&E WaveConnect™ program, which includes a pilot study underway in Humboldt County.

PG&E has filed a preliminary permit application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to study the southern site for three years. If findings are favorable, the utility could seek a license to install wave energy conversion devices capable of producing as much as 100 megawatts of electricity. The clean power would feed into the existing electrical grid at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which in turn is connected to the PG&E grid.

Experts believe that wave energy off the 745 mile California coastline could produce more than a fifth of the state's energy needs. The Santa Barbara County Community Environmental Council's renewable energy blueprint calls for more than eight percent of the county's future energy mix to come from the ocean. But there are many hurdles to jump before arriving at those targets, including environmental and land use concerns,  grid connections and design evolution.

"You can't develop a technology unless you can test it," said Roger Bedard, ocean energy leader with Electric Power Research Institute. "In this country, we are challenged with inferior infrastructure in testing ocean energy devices. PG&E's WaveConnect™ projects will provide the infrastructure needed to test and refine emerging technologies."

Throughout the process, PG&E will continue to work closely with local communities and elected officials to understand and address their interests and concerns. The project is expected to have no significant impact on existing coastal activities such as surfing, hiking or whale watching. Development will only move forward if technical studies support its feasibility and if environmental studies show that the project will not have significant negative environmental and economical effects.

Currently, the Earth's oceans produce roughly 300 megawatts of electricity from various devices that convert energy from water movement or the natural temperature and salinity changes into usable power. Next year that number is expected to skyrocket when a 250 megawatt seawall dam comes online in South Korea. But wave power will continue to lag other renewable technologies without development assistance.

Ultimately, PG&E's WaveConnect™ projects will help emerging technology companies develop reliable and cost-effective wave energy devices, find funding and help PG&E and other utilities bring this innovative new source of clean energy to customers.

"If a utility is going to make it happen in this country, it's going to be PG&E," Bedard said.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Where are the electric cars? Coming soon, say some of the automakers at the Frankfurt car show this week. Renault says an electric sedan will be in showrooms by 2011. Volkswagen is adding an electric model to its Up concept car. BMW will roll out a plug-in diesel-electric concept car. GM says the Chevy Volt is one of its "comeback" cars. Nissan will introduce an electric car in late 2010 in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. "This is not a false dawn. This is the real thing," says Paul Scott, vice president and founder of Plug In America. Skeptics, however, say limited range and high prices will continue to plague electric cars. Stay tuned.

Twenty teams from universities around the world will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon October 8-18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The teams will compete to design, build and operate energy-efficient, completely solar-powered houses. Winning teams will receive $100,000 over two years to support the competition's goal of reducing the cost of solar-powered homes and advancing solar technology. Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley and California College of the Arts will make up Team California. All the entries will demonstrate smart metering in the decathlon.

Canada's Nova Scotia Province has given the green light for a tidal energy demonstration project to place turbines in the Bay of Fundy to convert the bay's huge tides into electricity. A full-scale project, if viable, would involve hundreds of turbines and generate about 100 megawatts, or 10 percent of the province's energy needs. Utility Nova Scotia Power expects to put a test turbine into the water late in October. Fishermen have expressed concerns about the effects of turbines on catches.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:

Palo Alto's city-owned electric utility is planning for an influx of electric cars now that Tesla Motors plans a new powertrain plant in the Stanford Research Park. Ten thousand electric cars charging battery packs during the day wouldn't strain Palo Alto's power grid as a whole but some local distribution transformers could run into problems, according to a preliminary report from the city's utility.

Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has raised $1 billion for investments in renewable energy and clean technologies, the largest amount raised by a venture capital firm since 2007. It is also the first time that Khosla has raised money from other investors. Investors include the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), the biggest U.S. public pension fund. Investments will include green technologies such as solar power, biofuels and batteries.

The U.S. Energy Department is providing $11 million this year and next for advanced research in water power technologies at national laboratories in Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, Illinois and Tennessee. The funding is to evaluate buoys, turbines and other devices to produce electricity from the energy of ocean waves, tides and rivers, says Greenwire. The money will also support research to improve dams and other hydropower facilities.

Posted by: Kory Raftery

He hops off his bike and smiles.  He is no longer a victim of angry mornings spent in bumper to bumper California traffic.  When Grant Cameron arrives at work these days, exercise has his blood pumping but he is feeling both relaxed and refreshed.  It wasn't always this way. 

In Grant's life, pedals and an electric motor have replaced talk radio and the steering wheel. He now commutes to work on a recumbent electric bike that he invented - one he calls the "EV0."  The name is a nod to GM's no longer in production electric car, the EV1, produced from 1996 to 1999. 

Looking to help his mindset as well as his fitness and the environment, about a year ago Grant decided he would start cycling to work.  Recognizing that the greenest commute is one powered by his own body, he initially tried to tackle the 30 mile daily commute over the hilly terrain in San Diego on a mountain bike. 

"That was just too tough," he told me. "I love my bike, but I'm no Lance Armstrong.  I can't sustain that ride five days a week, and to be honest, I don't have the time."

So Grant spent the time he had wearing his thinking cap.  He bought a comfortable recumbent bike, an electric kit, a motor, throttle, controller and a lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePO4). The result is his EV0; an electric bike that helps with the hills and still allows him the option to pedal when he wants some exercise or more power.  For the technical specs and to see the bike in action, check out this video produced by Grant's filmmaker son, Hollis.

In a car, the commute from Grant's home in San Diego County to his job at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is traffic dependent and driving one way can take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.  On his electric bike, the commute is consistently 50 minutes, but Grant has the option of reducing that time should he decide to push the pedals with more vigor.         

When he's not inventing electric bikes, Grant studies wave patterns at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD.  He hopes his work will some day contribute to a smarter energy grid - one that is more reliant on things like wave power, and less reliant on carbon emitting energy sources. 

Posted by: Kory Raftery

It happens all the time in music, fashion and life: What once was old again is new. 

In the case of surfing, some people are dropping into the wave of environmental consciousness on their "retro" wooden boards.

Historians say the earliest surfers were riding wooden logs as far back as the sixth century.  Before wetsuits, rash guards, stickers and surf wax, there was the surfer, the ocean and the board - a trifecta of harmony.  Heavy wooden sleds were a mainstay until the foam revolution of the 1950's and 60's when surfers began to eat the forbidden fruit in the name of performance.  Foam and glass boards were our original eco-sin.  The environment has paid ever since.  

When wooden boards were virtually scrapped from the surf-scene, they were most commonly replaced by lighter, polyurethane foam. That foam is first shaped and then covered with fiberglass cloth and polyester resin. These petrochemicals emit harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere.  Even worse, there is no sufficient recycling program for old or broken foam surfboards.  Sure, you may find some in the dorms of UC Santa Barbara or UC Santa Cruz as makeshift tiki-bars.  A few serve as lawn chairs in front of surf shops  But our landfills act as graveyard for the vast majority of foam boards that have no rides left to give.      

In the last few years, many in the surf industry have decided to repent by looking for more sustainable materials. You can now ask your local shop about biofoam, carbon fiber, and eco-friendly epoxy. Environmentally conscious finishers are turning to oil-based resins for use in the glassing process.  But a few board architects are looking back to surfing's history for the key to building a more sustainable future. 

Maine based, all-wood Grain Surfboards are now being ridden from the east coast of the lower 48 to the north shore of Oahu. The boards still must be glued and glassed but are constructed of nothing but wood.  Foam purists question their responsiveness, but owners of the company say the boards are more than just rideable.

"It's a mistake to think wooden boards can't be performance boards," Brad Anderson told me from his shop in Maine.  "But comparing them to competitive foam boards is like comparing stock car racing to Formula One."    

In California, shapers like Ryan Lovelace and Danny Hess are seen as visionaries, or possibly re-visionaries when it comes to shaping wood surfboards that rival the performance of traditional foam and glass. Both are watermen in the best sense of the word.  Both use recycled surfboard foam in the innards of the board to keep the flex up and the weight down. 

Lovelace and his partner at Timberline Surfboards, Raphael Wolfe, do their shaping and woodworking in and around Santa Barbara. Hess hones his craft in his hometown of San Francisco.  But you can find his boards in shops from Cannon Beach, Oregon to Brooklyn, New York.  While they each have their own opinion on what types of wood to use and the optimum wood-to-foam ratio, their visions align when it comes to the robust strength, stability and lessened environmental impact of wood.

Hess' website states, "Each surfboard has a lifespan far longer than a conventional surfboard because the wood does not fatigue and break down the way foam can."
 
Lovelace agrees.  "If you take care of it, you can surf every day on a wood board for 25 - 30 years and never ding the rails or break it in half," he told me.  "So while they are a bit more expensive (to make and buy), you get a far better return on your investment."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Stormy seas offshore San Francisco. The city is trying to block Seattle-based Grays Harbor Ocean Energy from building a 100-megawatt wave power project 20 to 25 miles off the city's Ocean Beach in marine sanctuaries near the Farallon Islands. The project has drawn fire from environmental groups, surfers and commercial fishermen. San Francisco  asked the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission to give priority to the city's Oceanside Wave Energy Project that would be eight miles offshore and outside the sanctuaries.
• Now we head to the San Francisco waterfront where a small group is building a 60-foot catamaran made of used plastic bottles filled with dry ice. Huh? The boat, named Plastiki, is to sail across the Pacific to Australia. Project leader David de Rothschild, scion of the Rothschild banking family, says the adventure is to draw attention to plastic bottles, which consume a lot of energy to manufacture, are rarely recycled, and are "a symbol of waste." By constructing the all-plastic boat (the masts are metal) and sailing it across the Pacific, the Plastiki will show what recycled materials can do, he says. Bon Voyage!
• Prisons are going green. Several states are embracing energy efficiency, solar and wind power, biomass boilers, organic produce grown by inmates, and other green projects. Washington State's Department of Corrections has 34 LEED-certified facilities, while Federal Correctional Institute No. 3 in North Carolina is the first LEED-certified federal prison. Closer to home, a new $176 million juvenile detention center in Alameda County recently became the first jail in the country to receive LEED gold certification.
  

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

California's renewable energy outlook caught a rising tide today as the California Public Utilities Commission approved $4.8 million in funding for a major program to develop and demonstrate emerging wave power technology.

The study, called WaveConnect, will be led by PG&E off the coast of Mendocino and Humboldt counties. The program will receive an additional $1.2 million from the Department of Energy.

PG&E's first step will be to conduct meetings with local stakeholders and agencies to learn about their issues and concerns. After completing appropriate environmental reviews and permit applications, which could take a couple of years, PG&E then plans to build an undersea infrastructure, including power transmission cables, to support wave energy demonstration projects. The utility will then invite manufacturers of wave energy devices to install them offshore for testing and comparison.

Ultimately, the demonstration will help promising technology companies find funding and guide PG&E (and other utilities) in choosing which wave power developers to partner with.

Finavera AquaBuoy

There are many different approaches to choose from. Some systems take their power from surface waves, others from pressure changes below the surface. Some bob up and down with the waves, others let waves wash over them. Some even rest on the sea floor. WaveConnect will help sort out the technology whales from the minnows.

"The anticipated cost of wave power compares favorably to the early days of solar and wind," says William Toman, a renewable energy project manager at PG&E. "It will take several stages of design evolution to lower costs and increase reliability."

Last October, the CPUC rejected a 15-year contract signed by PG&E to purchase 2 megawatts of wave power from Finavera Renewables. The commission said the power was too expensive and the technology too experimental for prime time.  (Finavera has since refocused on the development of wind energy in Canada and Ireland.) 

But many experts believe wave power remains a highly promising new source of energy for California. Our 745-mile coastline could produce more than a fifth of the state's energy needs if--admittedly a big if--economic, environmental, land use and grid connection issues don't stand in the way, according to the California Energy Commission. 

Making ocean power technology work reliably and at a competitive price will be the first big challenge. Serving offshore installations with power transmission lines will be another economic and engineering hurdle. Finally, ocean power developers must also convince local communities and government regulators that their installations will not destroy marine life, cause boating collisions or navigational hazards, or degrade ocean views.