World’s first Wave Hub to power 7,500 homes from the oceans’ depths
Canada has a storied maritime history, but our coastal waters will play an even more important role in the future, too, as tidal power starts going commercial around the globe.
We’ve written about all kinds of renewable energy topics here on Sync, from devices that harvest minute amounts of power from stray radio waves to truckloads of solar gadgets. It’s always a hot topic here in Canada, where many of us live in areas where eco-friendly electricity powers our homes and workplaces.
Over in south west England, the ocean’s waves are now ready to provide power to more than 7,000 homes. It’s all thanks to the Wave Hub (and the ocean itself, of course), the first generation “station” of its kind in England. Located 16KM out at sea and covering an area of about eight square kilometers, the Wave Hub and its conversion devices will be able to push up to 20 megawatts of power to the country’s grid.
Four different companies will take care of converting the ocean’s kinetic energy to electricity, and that will allow for the simultaneous evaluation of of different wave power generation systems. It’s expected to reduce carbon dioxide output by more than 24,000 tons annually, and that number could more than double in the future. The Wave Hub is expected to increase its total capacity to around 50 megawatts once transmission technology has matured.
Like south west England, the Canadian coast provides ample opportunity to harness wave energy — and Canadian companies have been plugging away at wave technologies, too.
Pemberton BC’s SyncWave and Toronto’s Wave Energy Technologies are both angling to be major players in the global ocean power scene. SyncWave also has its sights set on delivering a reliable, green power generation option to remote communities like those in Canada’s north — where diesel generators are still somewhat common. Another BC company, Clean Current, has had a tidal turbine generator installed off the shores of Victoria since 2008, where it replaced a pair of diesel generators at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.
There’s also the FORCE (Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy) project in Halifax, which will begin power generation trials early next year.
Look for wave energy to play a big role in our country’s future power plans. Some reports estimate that it could generate as much as two thirds of the electricity we require, and it also has tremendous economic potential — with estimates as high $30 billion in annual electricity sales.
[Source: PhysOrg]
(Image Credit: WaveHub)
What is this going to do to our sea life? Sonar like situation?
WOW!!!
So are you saying that the same technology that was ready to roll in the early 60′s is now ready to roll all over again? WOW!!! Does that mean we need to wait another 50 years for it to be ready to roll again–maybe?
Yeah, it’s absolutely a world of stifled technology.
I totally agree
I was in the maritimes when they were going to harness
the Fundy tidal waves to produce electrical energy to replace dependance on oil.
Well, the circus always comes to town.
Not 1 bit of energy has been economically produced.
Advanced technolgy may make this viable in the future.
When the Irving and Sobeys empires invest ,I’ll be on board.
In Manitoba, the government is investing millions in wind
power turbines.
I have been a visitor to these “Wind Farms” and 90% of the time they don’t produce enough energy to power the red warning light.They buy electricity from Manitoba Hydro!!!
this is great i mean with all the global warming and what not 24000 tons is aloft i hope this is really successful worldwide :D
Uh-oh… don’t tell McGuinty about this, he’ll try to get it going in Lake Ontario at 200 times the cost!
Exactly
Very true
Will icebergs cause a problem, off the canadian coast? I don’t think they have this problem off the South West coast of England.
Really ! The oil boys who run our government and that of the USA agree with this .. Yea mon.. Sure .. That is why they are building 2 pipelines to ship dirty bitumen to the Gulf of Mexico and Kitimat BC. The tankers are now 10 times the size of the Exon Valdez and one spill will wipe out the BC coastal natural ecological assets .Sorry the Gulf has been done by BP and Cheney. On to Kitimat where 100 foot waves will do the Job. Please tell me the name of the Planet where the oily execs plan to retire to.
Oh yeah it is the planet Harper in Ursa Nebula .
Brian Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who received $300,000 in cash from German-Canadian deal maker Karlheinz Schreiber in 1993 and 1994, did not pay taxes on the payments in the years he received the money. He will be their host..
Okay norm… enough with the belly-aching. We know you’re not a Conservative. Who cares? Karlheinz Schriber is in jail in Deutschland and Mulroney’s a has-been. What are you complaining about?
this is not new technology. it is however the best we have going into the future. nrc research has shown zero fish kill however whaling lanes can not be used. go (blue energy canada)
Well it simple as that this technology is already more than decade old…so please what take you and Canadian government to realise that this technology will actually work for Canadians?? Sims like you are way out of something new like this….Simply saying they are many new advections to be used for very easy power consumptions but seams the government try to controlled all until everybody used, than they say OK it is something NEW !!!!
If real, this alternative can used world wide even in the oceans if done correctly. Sure beats the so called fake cold fusion eh?
I’ve known about this for years watching science channels on tv. I don’t know why it is news.
Since electrical power is difficult to transmit over long distance, I wonder how this will be of help to provinces or states that are not near the coast line?
I think that moving water does provide the cleanest, most dependable, and most easily accessible means available for generating electricity. But waves are not the only form of moving water, and wave-powered generators are not the only means to exploit that movement. Invisible under all the fanfare and political monument building that surrounds our massive modern hydro-electric terra-forming, lies micro-hydro, another technology that has been around for decades. But since it involves simply dropping an appropriately sized generator (or a thousand of them) into a stream, it has never had the sex appeal of say, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, which created the world’s largest man-made lake, and turned the upper Peace River into an ecological catastrophe. And which by the way, is one earthquake away from obliterating a number of small towns downstream. Imagine how many micro-hydro generators could be dropped into the Peace for the same money, with no environmental consequences at all.
I say scrap it to expensive, keep burning coal
Click on my name to see a video called “Our Technical Reality”. There is a lot more than just wave technology that has been stifled but has existed for years… show this video to friends, family, and demand to know from your MP why they haven’t utilized all of these energy methods… wave, tidal, wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal harvesting, etc, etc, etc…
Another mind-numbing idea from the annals of idiocy. The power grid is the most wasteful contraption on the planet followed closely by how caveman-like we generate the current to begin with. We should all be sent to prison for not educating ourselves about how catastrophically wasteful it really is and yet we don’t demand change in this area. Every power station in the world wastes about 80% of the electricity it produces before reaching our homes. Think about that and then tell me if ****ing smart meters and dubious personal consumption reduction is really worth the hassle. FIX the distribution problem!
The
bay of fundy had the same tec. 10 years ago.
the tides are not a 24 hour source of energy and so not are the waves.
leaving the investors in a state of low wave,! over 50% of the time. At least the tides are a sure thing ???? Or not!
Paying .80 cents KWH renewable energy and charging aprox 0 .15 cent average is a great move for our country
top #1 energy
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#3 making sure # 1 and # 2 are at the top of the list.
gogal anolyte