Oregon Wave Energy Test Site Selected  

EarthTechling reports that a wave power test site has been selected off the US west coast - Oregon Wave Energy Test Site Selected.

Wave energy research is already an important part of the renewable energy efforts being made by universities in the Pacific Northwest but recent news issued by Oregon State University (OSU) indicates it could be headed to a whole new level. In the report, OSU says that the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC)-a collaboration between researchers at OSU and the University of Washington since 2008-has been working on securing an off-shore parcel of ocean that would facilitate needs for large scale wave energy research and testing purposes. OSU, for example, currently operates a small-scale wave power testing facility in the form of the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, but the needs of its project partners like Texas-based Neptune Wave Power call for testing at a larger scale. That sort of full scale field testing could begin soon now that the NNMREC has officially selected a site for what is to become the first wave energy research program and facility of its type in the US.

Funded by the state of Oregon and the U.S. Department of Energy, the site would be about one square mile in size, two miles northwest of Yaquina Head on the central Oregon coast. The facility would be located in an area where water is about 150-180 feet deep, with a sandy seafloor. According to OSU, it is exposed to unobstructed waves that have traveled thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean.