PG&E's declining interest in wave power  

GigaOm reports that interest in wave power in California seems to be going all glassy - PG&E Sinks Wave Power.

Looks like California utility PG&E is finally giving up on wave power, for the time being. PG&E’s renewable energy spokesman Denny Boyles tells KQED’s Climate Watch, that the company has essentially abandoned any wave power projects it had been researching, including pilot projects and permits for three areas along the California coast.

It’s not all that shocking. Despite many companies’ best efforts, wave and tidal power installations have been largely stuck in the pilot stage, and bigger projects in particular have faced technical glitches and a lack of funding. According to research done by Black and Veatch (B&V) for the California Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) last year, ocean power — both wave and tidal — have one of the highest levelized costs of energy (the cost over the life of the system) out of all the clean energy generation options out there (see graph).

Four years ago, PG&E agreed to buy energy from a wave power project that was going to be built by Finavera, and was slated to become the country’s first commercial wave power project. However state commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decided the technology was too new and the prices too high for a viable project, and approval for the energy procurement contract was denied.

PG&E also scrapped a plan last year to build a 5-MW pilot wave project off the Humboldt County cost in northern California, after finding the project was just too expensive. PG&E had estimated it would cost $50 million just to cover the expenses of installing the infrastructure for the power transmission, monitoring and other equipment. The figure didn’t include the cost of the equipment for converting the wave motion into energy. PG&E also abandoned a plan to build another pilot project off the cost of Mendocino County in Northern California in 2009.

The now-lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom (formerly San Francisco Mayor) has long been calling for a wave project off the California coast in the 2012-2013 time frame. In 2009, San Francisco submitted its own preliminary application to federal regulators for a permit to develop a 10 MW-30 MW project with potential to generate up to 100 MW. For comparison, the PG&E-Finavera deal that the regulators shot down was for just 2 MW.