Oregon State researchers work to harness ocean's power

Researchers at Oregon State University are honing the design of a new electricity-generating ocean buoy that can turn the sea's churning into clean, green power.

The scientists are helping to lay the groundwork for what would be the nation's first offshore wave energy park. Engineers have estimated that harnessing just 0.2 percent of the ocean's untapped energy would meet the entire planet's power needs.

The West Coast - and especially Oregon - is swimming in big, horsepower-heavy swells kicked up far out in the Pacific Ocean that may eventually become electricity-generating waves.

"Oregon is the sweet spot for wave energy in the world," said Oregon State University engineering professor Annette von Jouanne, who is leading an Oregon State wave energy project with fellow professor Alan Wallace. "Anyone who goes to the coast can see the potential in that ocean."

To realize that potential, Oregon State is working on a new type of generator to convert the motion of waves into electricity. The prototype is based on a linear magnetic generator that uses what researchers call a "contactless force transmission system" to generate electricity.

That allows a buoy stationed offshore to produce electricity without having its main parts in contact, reducing the effects of wear and corrosion that at sea can turn the toughest materials into rusted wrecks.

The buoy itself is a copper wire coil surrounding a shaft made from high-density, rare earth magnets. A cable running to the seafloor holds the shaft roughly in one position, while the outer part of the buoy holding the coil bobs up and down on the waves.

That motion, a magnet moving through the center of a copper coil, generates electricity. Each buoy should produce about 250 kilowatts; four rows of 20 buoys each would extract 20 megawatts of electricity, and a network of 200 buoys would produce enough to power downtown Portland.

The Douglas County town of Gardiner has been singled out as a prime location for all those buoys, because of an unused electricity substation at the now-abandoned International Paper mill, and a seafloor pipeline.

That means the start-up costs for a commercial wave park off the town's coast would be substantially lower than a site where facilities would be built from scratch.

Justin Klure, the state Energy Department official coordinating the wave power initiative, told The Eugene Register-guard that a pilot project could be up and running there in about two years.

But there are obstacles: the state is working with the federal government and local jurisdictions to lay out some kind of a road map for getting approval for a wave energy operation, but at this point it's all unexplored territory.

Additionally, a small commercial wave park could take up a chunk of ocean 1.25 nautical miles deep by 1,000 feet wide, a hazard not only to coastal navigation but also to the state's important fishing and crabbing industries.

If a wave park is built off Gardiner, it would just happen to float on top of very prime crabbing territory.

"The local fishermen who have met with the folks from the (OSU) engineering lab have looked at the charts, and their first thought has always been, 'Is there any other place you can put it?,'" said Nick Furman of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

Still, Furman said many fishermen are excited by the idea.

"I personally, and a lot of other people I've talked to who are involved in the project are pretty excited," he said. "In this day and age of $75-a-barrel oil, it certainly seems like it would make sense to harness as many sustainable, clean methods of power as possible."

It will be up to a commercial wave power company to actually harness that energy. Oregon State is helping set the stage for that to happen, but its goal is to get funding for a national wave energy laboratory to be built near the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com