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NOT TRUE! The company has never gone bust. But it is true that most of its investors are from outside of the UK - including General Electric from the US... http://www.oceanpd.com/docs/OPD%20Press%20Release% 20June%2006.pdf

The formula below shows how wave power can be calculated. Excluding waves created by major storms, the largest waves are about 15 meters high and have a period of about 15 seconds. According to the formula, such waves carry about 1700 kilowatts of potential power across each meter of wavefront. A good wave power location will have an average flux much less than this: perhaps about 50 kW/m.

* Formula: Power (in kW/m) = k H^2 T ~ 0.5 H^2 T,

where k = constant, H = wave height (crest to trough) in meters, and T = wave period (crest to crest) in seconds.

Portugal claims the world's first commercial wave farm, the Aguçadora Wave Park near Póvoa de Varzim, established in 2006. The farm will initially use three Pelmis P-750 machines generating 2.25 MW.[1] [2] Initial costs are put at 8,5 million euro. Subject to successful operation, a further 70 million euro is likely to be invested before 2009 on a further 28 machines to generate 525 MW.[3]

Funding for a wave farm in Scotland was announced on February 20, 2007 by the Scottish Executive, at a cost of over 4 million pounds, as part of a £13 million funding packages for marine power in Scotland. The farm will be the world's largest with a capacity of 3MW generated by four Pelamis machines.[4].

The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.

The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010.

Your not taking into account that the technology behind this is active and in development right now.

http://www.oceanpd.com/default.html

Ocean Power Delivery is a company that branched off the research done in Edinburgh University, including Stephen Salter, on wave power. It has received over £6m in venture capitalist money...

Why wait those three years when there are wave power generators made by a company called Pelamis waiting for full testing? They have alreadty supplied electricity to a grid in England This system seems much less likely to impact on any change in global sea temperatures. Plus, it is definitely not vaporware!

EPRI released a series of reports on economics of ocean wave energy conversion recently. The lifetime average cost of electriciy using Pelamis devices ranged from 9 - 10 cents/kwh in good US sites (but in Maine, 32 c/kwh since the waves suck). That includes millions of dollars in maintenance, overhauls, full-time ship & crew to service them (so it's a realistic number). Here is the final summary report, where you can read it yourself:

http://www.epri.com/attachments/297213_009_Final_R eport_RB_01-14-05.pdf
[EPRI]

You can read more detailed reports from a listing here, which provides more specific info about each site studied in the US:

http://www.epri.com/targetWhitePaperContent.asp?pr ogram=270686&value=05T084.0&objid=297213

Pelamis has been designed & optimized for years, and works in a wide range of wave climates:

http://www.oceanpd.com/Pelamis/Powermatrixgraph.ht ml [oceanPD]

Available wave energy increases with wave period and the square of height and you can see Pelamis stops extracting more energy above 750 kw. Also Pelamis can not convert more than 50% of wave energy available at its best (did my own study at my university, no online references :-( ) so surfers will still have waves.

Tidal barrage is too costly for initial capital and has an enourmous environmental impact. However, tidal current generators, much like "submerged wind turbines" will have a smaller environmental "footprint" and a more modular design:

http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/energy/tidalener gy/tidalenergy.htm

(I'm a graduate student studying wave energy conversion. I hope these links provide some interesting reading...)

Sun heats the land, air and water unevenly which makes wind (read more). Wind blows the water which makes waves (read more). Waves bend the joints between the floats, which causes fluid to be pumped, which turns generators, which makes electricity (read more).

So your thinking is correct -- there's no such thing as a free lunch. If the energy ever stops coming into this system (i.e., the sun stops shining), we've got big problems... :-)

Are available at the company's site. Flash animation of how the system works can be found here.

From their site:

A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh.

And:

The 750kw full-scale prototype is 120m long and 3.5m in diameter...

So this isn't very different from the power density of, say, wind turbines. It has the advantage that you can locate the 40,000 12m long 3.5m diameter devices - not to mention X00,000 anchoring cables - out of sight in the ocean, instead on the top of ridges where they stick out like sore thumbs and chop the occasional bird migration.

Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way. With that amount, people will start complaining. Also, their site gives no estimation of cost per kw. A salt ocean with high waves is a very machine-hostile environment, so these devices will have a very finite life time, and at the sizes they give, they are anything but cheap.

So while this is very clever, and nice, it doesn't get us off the hook for a sustainable energy source. Floating nuclear plants, now - that's a thought. Its the ultimate in "not in my back yard". :-)

Are available at the company's site. Flash animation of how the system works can be found here.

From their site:

A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh.

And:

The 750kw full-scale prototype is 120m long and 3.5m in diameter...

So this isn't very different from the power density of, say, wind turbines. It has the advantage that you can locate the 40,000 12m long 3.5m diameter devices - not to mention X00,000 anchoring cables - out of sight in the ocean, instead on the top of ridges where they stick out like sore thumbs and chop the occasional bird migration.

Still, you'd need something lime X000 km^2 to provide all of the UK's electricity this way. With that amount, people will start complaining. Also, their site gives no estimation of cost per kw. A salt ocean with high waves is a very machine-hostile environment, so these devices will have a very finite life time, and at the sizes they give, they are anything but cheap.

So while this is very clever, and nice, it doesn't get us off the hook for a sustainable energy source. Floating nuclear plants, now - that's a thought. Its the ultimate in "not in my back yard". :-)

A little more detail about how that stuff works wouldn't have hurt in that story.

Ocean Power Delivery Limited has a website! And they have a nice little Flash animation that explains those sausages.

A little more detail about how that stuff works wouldn't have hurt in that story.

Ocean Power Delivery Limited has a website! And they have a nice little Flash animation that explains those sausages.

Pelamis was mentioned back in April last year, including a link to OceanPD. All in a post about three quarters of the way down the comments. I only mentioned it originally because a mate is a mech eng on the project. Btw, it does seem like a pretty cool plan, I saw a model running in a tank a few years ago, and the progress has been amazingly quick.
So, as the man said, nothing to see/sea here.

This seems an interesting project, though another project in Scotland, the Pelamis seems more interesting and closer to completion. A an old Uni mate of mine works at Ocean Power Delivery which has spent the last few years developing the Pelamis, which is basically a 120m long 3m round articulated snake. A working full-scale prototype is currently getting installed in a channel around the Shetland isles. The software and control systems seem really interesting due to the large amount of backup systems and the use of FPGAs.

Two thirds of the earth is covered by sea. We do not need all that space for ships and not all ocean is so ecologically important and vulnerable that it would be hurt by being covered with solar panels. Does anybody know if ever the feasability of floating solar panels has been investigated? Put a lot of them together in a network, enough distance from each other and connected by strong carbon fiber ropes, or with wave energy harvesting rods, as discussed in this /. story. Should be robust against large waves during storms. Put some loud high frequency whistles at the edges of the net to chase away whales (or some other similar protection trick). Transport of energy to land by cable on the bottom of the sea, just like phone & internet cables.

I read an interesting perspective on wave power from Dr. Peter M. Duesing regarding the exploitation of wave and tidal power here that basically says that its prospects of being a major contributor to large scale production are slight. On a small scale there are several cases that support localised usage.

Regarding Ocean POwer Delivery, there is a pdf regarding their funding package available here.

If their site goes down or if you don't want to click, here is the text clipped from the pdf:

Press release

Wave energy company Ocean Power Delivery secures £6m funding package

Edinburgh-based wave energy company Ocean Power Delivery Ltd (OPD) today announced that is has secured £6m (EUR 9.8m) funding from an international consortium of venture capital companies led by Norsk Hydro Technology Ventures (NTV), the venture capital arm of Norway's largest industrial company and including 3i, Europe's leading venture capital company and Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). Each organisation provided an equal level of funding to produce the largest investment of its kind in a wave power company.

The investment success builds on OPD's steady rise to prominence in the field and clears the way for the company to become the leading force in the sector.

"This investment is the culmination of OPD's intensive four-year programme to develop the Pelamis concept, the funds secured today will allow us to demonstrate and commercialise the system," says Richard Yemm, Managing Director of OPD. "Wave energy represents a major commercial opportunity and we have positioned ourselves well to take advantage of this."

The Pelamis is a long, thin, semi-submerged articulated structure composed of four cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints, the complete system is oriented head-on to incoming waves. The wave-induced motion of the joints is resisted by hydraulic rams, these pump fluid through hydraulic motors to drive electrical generators. A 750kW machine with a similar output to a modern wind turbine will be 150metres long and 3.5metres in diameter. An array of 40 Pelamis machines would provide enough power to supply the energy needs of 20,000 homes.

OPD aims to have a working prototype producing electricity to the grid within the next two years.

Many previous wave energy concepts have failed as they lack the inherent survivability of the Pelamis. The system uses the unique combination of a streamlined, low-profile form and proven technology from the offshore oil and gas sector to provide the required load-shedding and reliability to withstand the rigours of the marine environment.

OPD has recently demonstrated the system at intermediate scale in the Firth of Forth as part of a UK DTI supported programme to address all key aspects of technical risk. Further DTI support in conjunction with today's investment will allow all elements of the full-scale system to be thoroughly tested this summer before being installed in the first full-scale demonstrator next year.

In 1999 the company won a contract to install a pair of Pelamis machines off Islay within the Scottish Renewables Obligation and recently beat off stiff international competition to secure an agreement with BC Hydro, the Canadian West Coast utility, to carry out a full feasibility study for a 2MW scheme for installation off Vancouver Island during 2003.

Graeme Sword, 3i director commented: "OPD has developed a leading renewable energy technology which positions the business to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in the rapidly developing renewable energy market. The combination of this unique technology and strong management makes OPD an ideal fit for 3i in the development of our support for alternative energy technologies."

"NTV's role is to seek exciting investments with venture capital financial returns, in arapidly evolving new energy economy." says Jørgen Rostrup, NTV's Managing Director. "We screened several wave energy machines around the world before finding Pelamis, and are delighted to work with OPD and our co-investors in commercialising this concept."

"SAM is proud to be part of this exciting project in what we have identified as a highly promising new opportunity in the renewable energy space. Dr Richard Yemm has managed to gather an impressive group of talented people who have produced a design that stands out for successfully marrying robustness with efficiency," says Gianni Operto, principal of SAM Private Equity.

ends 20 March 2002

For further information please contact:

Ocean Power Delivery Ltd

Richard Yemm or Max Carcas

Tel: +44 131 554 8444

Email: enquiries@oceanpd.com

Web: www.oceanpd.com