Beware The Power of the Ocean  

Renewable Energy Access reports that ocean energy company Finavera's pilot AquaBuOY project off the Oregon coast has hit a few snags - sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Just hours before its scheduled removal, AquaBuOY 2.0 has sunk.

Finavera Renewable's 72-foot high wave energy test buoy went down in about 115 feet of water on Oct. 27, just one day before it was to be removed from its location in the waters off of Lincoln County, a part of the Central Oregon Coast. The device had been deployed on September 6.

While company officials say they don't know exactly why it sunk, Finavera Renewable's spokesman Mike Clark said, "It seems to have something to do with the float section of the device." He said the buoy began taking on water and the bilge pump "couldn't keep up with the amount of water it was taking on." The pump failed and the device went down. "We're pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with the power-generating technology," Clark said. ...

Wayne Belmont, Lincoln County's attorney, said he'd like the device out "as soon as possible, but we live on the coast and we also recognize that winter weather conditions make it very difficult to do so." Neither Belmont nor Link believed any legal action would result from the 40-ton buoy's mishap. "Stuff happens," Link said. "When you put anything in the ocean you have to be careful."

Finavera's Clark said "we would rather get it out tomorrow if not yesterday" but removing the $ 2 million buoy requires some cooperation. For one Mother Nature has to play along. The Pacific Ocean off the Oregon Coast can get very nasty as winter approaches. "It's just a piece of steel and we're not going to risk anybody's life to get a piece of steel out of the ocean," Clark said. ...

Finavera officials said they would likely learn more about what went wrong the sooner they got the device off the ocean floor. "The evidence will be in better condition than if it's down there for six months," Bannister said.

According to Clark, the test buoy was only engineered to withstand three months of use. It sunk after two. "So when people say - Oh there's this device and it sank. How do you expect it to last 20 years or even five years in a real commercial development? It wasn't designed for that," Clark said. "Granted it wasn't designed for two months either."

Although Finavera officials admitted the sunken buoy was not the result they had wanted, they said from a data-gathering point of view, the test was a success. "For the purpose of the project, it was highly successful," Bannister said. "The actual data we got was positive and validated all the modeling," Clark added. Key data was harnessed from the host pump and the power takeoff system, he said. "But that's really hard to explain to people when the device sank - that we still got a lot of valuable information."

Renewable Energy Access also has an article pointing out that the problems encountered by companies like Finavera and Verdant recently are a good sign, as they show that companies are getting real projects out into the water - the first step towards generating power commercially.

Question: In the past few months, there's been some news of problems experienced by wave or tidal developers, such as broken turbines or even a sunken wave buoy. Does that mean that marine renewable energy isn't ready for prime time? --Jim S., Nantucket, MA


Answer: Not at all. In fact, to the contrary, broken projects are a sign of tangible progress because it means that projects are actually getting into the water to generate data. Real operating experience is critical to the eventual success of the industry, but over the past few years, lack of funding and regulatory barriers kept demonstration projects from moving forward. As important as laboratory testing and computer simulations are, field testing and resulting improvements are a critical step in any new product development cycle.

Currently, Verdant Power has a test facility that has been operating for nearly a year, while Finavera just completed a test of a buoy. Although Finavera's buoy sank, the demonstration enabled Finavera to gather valuable data and also conclude that this particular iteration of its technology would not be cost effective. In this regard, the demonstration of AquaBuoy 2 was a success.

In the case of Verdant Power, its engineers have worked over the past several months with specialty metal fabricators to strengthen its blade construction and mounting fixtures and engaged the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to provide additional testing and design confirmation. The replacement blade system is now awaiting redeployment in early spring so that system testing and monitoring can be resumed. Given the earlier successes of the remainder of its overall system we should anticipate once again witnessing meaningful production from this demonstration site.

Expect more demonstrations over the next several months. In fact, at the time of this writing, Ocean Renewable Power Company is deploying its OCGen tidal turbine in Eastport, Maine; Ireland's Ocean Energy, Ltd recently completed 8 months of successful wave technology testing, Ocean Power Technologies has been testing its PowerBuoy off the shore of New Jersey since 1997 — and others are planning deployments in early 2008.

The fact that the industry has experience and can now learn from actual demonstrations will yield more data about how these technologies operate and, ultimately, will lead to more successful commercial projects. Further, the fact that some technologies encountered unexpected hurdles — in part, because these pioneering companies are pushing the envelope — demonstrates the importance of allowing wave and tidal developers to get projects into the water and test them in real operating conditions. ...

At the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Scotland a world first was achieved when Pelamis, a wave energy converter developed by Edinburgh-based Pelamis Wave Power (formerly Ocean Power Delivery), generated electricity for the National Grid from EMEC's wave test site off Billia Croo, Stromness. A second test site for tidal devices off the island of Eday has also recently been opened by Dublin-based OpenHydro.

We can't expect perfection from any technology the first time out. Note the 1879 light bulb success of Thomas Edison, with 40 hours of operation being claimed. He went to 1,200 hours the following year. This may be likened to Marine Current Turbines' (MCT) 200 hours during their first 18 months of operation, followed by Verdant's 7,000 hours. Look for more from Verdant's RITE project as they re-furbish in early 2008. If we can reduce the regulatory and permitting hurdles that keep so many from taking the plunge we'll see continued advances. In the meantime, what we're seeing right now is what progress and innovation look like — if we give it a chance.

For those who are fans of big surf footage, check out this video from northern California this week at Surfline - "Biggest Maverick's Ever ?".