Energy from Sea Waves
Here’s an article on energy from sea waves, to which I have mixed emotions about calling readers’ attention. The subject is exciting, and very little progress appears to be being made on it, so any news is intriguing. But man, this guy needs an editor like a baby needs her mother’s milk, and I’m a bit dubious on these claims. If there are any experts on the subject who would like to weigh in here, I’d appreciate it.
Craig:I have seen several articles on this invention. It has been around for some years now. The idea is based on the heaving of the waves, a long, floating snake-like set of tubular floaters which are attached to each other with a hydraulic hinge pump; while one wave goes under the first pair of tubular floaters they point upwards and then the wave passes so the floaters point down, providing a hinge type hydraulic pump energy to pump the fluid into a hydraulic generator. Many hinged tubular floaters forming the snakes will be bending one way or the other, providing a more or less constant supply of pressurized hydraulic fluid to the generators. Sound simple and straight forward to me. They have made many tests around the English coasts. I have seen better looking ideas, but this one is very simple, maybe that’s why it called their attention. Remember that wave power is very predictable and constant, not like tides, which are predictable, but are intermittent (which is one of the things they say about wind and solar).
This device is called an attenuator it is undulating moving as the ocean surface moves these movements are used to drive hydraulic pumps driving a generator.
It works best with a certain wave period that matches the length of the sections.
http://www.pelamiswave.com/ is the only version I know of that has been deployed.
A test off the coast of Portugal was cancelled due to the system taking on water.
It has also been deployed in the ocean off Scotland
Recently their main sponsor EON a major European Utility withdrew from the project.