How Wave Power Could Be The Future Of Energy

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[jopo]

Wave energy has great potential, but like many new technologies, it has it's ups and downs.

[_starfiend]

There's been wave power research in the Shetlands and Orkneys, north of Scotland, for over twenty years now. I vaguely remember something from the early/mid 90's where someone showed off technology at the time. What was interesting about it was that the technology actually dissipated some of the wave power so that the waves reaching the shore were less powerful and damaging than they had been before.

[Lorgs]

Just finished my degree in naval engineer, where we actually did som research and testing of wave generators. The elephant in the room of any energy harvesting is the efficiency, and we struggled to get even 1% efficiency. Meaning that when a wave passes, we extract 1% of it's energy. If you were to have 100% efficiency, then there wouldn't be any waves behind the device at all, which is speculated to be impossible (just like the wind turbine problem of 100% efficiency being physically impossible). But the energy density of waves is huge, so we should be happy to see even 5% efficiency. The best option we saw for minimizing cost was to keep all facilities adjacent to land, so only the kinetic parts was in water, and generators on land. Means that pretty much all maintenance is reduced and can be done from land, also reducing the cost by insane amounts

[gregmontalvo]

In 1980, when I started a vo-tech program to be an electrician, my instructor challenged us to figure out how to harness waves to generate electricity. He said there are a lot of things to overcome but the possibilities were limitless.

[oronjoffe]

There was some testing done in Orkney in the north of Scotland. After about a decade of testing, both systems were retired. One thing that caught my eye was that neither system returned in the course of its lifetime the energy spent in making it… I spoke to an engineer who was involved in the project and he explained that the harsh marine conditions, on the one hand, and the slow speeds but great forces exerted, on the other hand, make it very difficult to make a resilient and reliable system. It’ll be brilliant, of course, if a good way was found to harvest wave energy, but I am less optimistic than I used to be that this is a worthwhile approach to renewable energy.

[Robisquick]

I have never seen a project with a specific sim that has produced such a wide array of solutions and mechanical styles. I supposed the unpredictability of the waves, and the salt water make this so much more challenging. But wow this is mindblowing.

[jehiahmaduro]

I think its really cool that they made the device smart enough to dive when seas and waves are too powerful to generate power with out damaging the device. THATS GENIOUS! In places where hurricanes are frequent that is a massive protection of your investment.

[boxlessthinker]

I love the variety of solutions shown in this video! Reminds me of the “glory days” of automotive and aviation development allowing non-scientists see lots of creative solutions and predict the winners. Kind of like season 1 of Battlebots.

Measuring environmental impact looks challenging…. Seems to me there is great potential for coastal areas though I had not considered your point about these systems increasing complexity to the grid. Comparing costs might be tricky using optimized solar and wind designs to the comparatively newer tidal/wave systems. Somehow you need an offset for predicted reductions from development of the newer systems (assuming they prove to be technically and financially feasible).

Your videos are consistently interesting to me! Thank you for producing them!

[laminarscientific]

Great video Matt! The resource is diverse and market needs vary, which can lead to more than one winner.

[cepavrai]

Any video about any renewable energy generation technology must speak about the storage issue. Renewable energy is intermittent, so unless you accept that you laptop/fridge/traffic light/hospital would run only on sunny or windy days, You need to acknowledge that you could have the best wind or solar or wave farm, but without a dependable nuclear/gas/hydro power station the electric grid will collapse.

[g.]

I actually had a renewable energy course where one of our homework assignments was calculating energy output from waves. It depends on the coastline but most coastlines of developed nations are more like 5-10kw/m. The US has an estimated 1170 TWh per year of potential wave energy on the coastlines but 50% of that is in the Alaskan coastline in specific spots and that isn't considering conversion efficiency and transmission.

Even including the heavily inflated Alaskan numbers, the US coastline is an estimated 153, 646km long from NOAA. So that's 7614.9MWh/km of annual production. Assuming a combined conversion and transmission efficiency of around 80% it would be 6091.92MWh/km. So to power a state like IL which uses 197.6TWh annually you are going to need 32, 436.4km of pure wave generation on the coast in high wave areas to power one state, not including spacing between the units and maintained access. You're going to need to consume an absurd amount of the coastline to power just a city.

80% efficiency WITHOUT considering transmission and conversion, just pure kinetic absorption is also insanely high because it would mean you are taking a 10m high wave and turning it into a 2m high wave. Real world efficiencies seem to be in the single digits right now.

Realistically, after spending money on marine resistant materials, bearings, and maintenance I have an extremely hard time believing the low cost/kw these start ups are promising. I think this is why all of the actual wave generation facilities deployed have produced far under target or were shutdown or converted to research facilities only.


I'd like to be proven very wrong but I just don't think there is that much cheap energy in readily available in waves compared to something like solar and batteries.

[thruknobulaxii]

In the mid 70’s, I saw a wave-power device that looked remarkably like a single pair of those yellow slats with a single flex-point (?) between them to generate a current.
How encouraging that it’s only taken us 50-odd years to string twenty or so of them together.
_Go humans!_

[debscamera]

Love the power of the ocean.
Couple corrections: sometimes the sea is calm - not often, but sometimes. And weather bouys are a great example of tech that's handled the harsh conditions for decades.

[InnerG]

Great review of Wave energy generation tech.

One company I was hoping to hear you mention or speak about it EcoWave Power which utilizes the coast to collect the energy whilst avoiding most of the harsh conditions of at-sea tech systems. According to them, this saves a ton of cost on deployment and just yesterday they've connected to the grid with the country of Israel. I'd love to hear your take and see your coverage of their technology.

[grahamgresty]

There is room for wave power on sites of coastal errosion. I think the best design for this are air rams where the waves act like pistons in tubes and drive tesla turbines to generate electricity. Taking the power out of the wave thereby reduces errosion. The sites would be good for battery storage as well.

[dwaynemcsloy]

Love the the videos and learning about the good things happening. Newer to the podcast with your brother and throughly enjoy it as well as they augment each other very well.

[matthewkramer]

What happened to the submersible buoys attached to water pumps anchored to the ocean floor? These buoys are 40 meters or so below the surface - out of the way for most boats and protected from storms. The pumps then pressurize water for turbines on the land. I was very impressed with this strategy - began in Australia in early 2000’s.

[matthewjackson]

Minor thing, don’t quote the tax rebate adjusted number on solar. Rebates are temporary and don’t show actual market cost.

[paulk]

We need to be developing these for the Great Lakes Now.

[daspisch]

I’m concerned about our hasty transition to ‘clean’ energy. A century ago, coal-powered power stations were seen as groundbreaking. However, we now understand the repercussions of using coal. These consequences can be readily quantified with the data we have today. But what about renewables? How significantly are we impacting the ecosystem by halting wind with our turbines, disrupting waves with floating devices, and preventing sunlight from warming the earth with our solar farms? How will these actions affect our environment in 100 years? Or in 1, 000 years?