Wave Power: Harnessing the World’s Largest Untapped Renewable Energy Resource

By: | June 23rd, 2015

IndustryTap has covered Sea Snakes, Tidal Power and a plan to harness 100 billion tons of water per day in the Bay of Fundy. Now Aquamarine Power of Scotland, which has based its wave power designs on the oyster, has installed the equivalent of 64 GW wavepower technology and is achieving great results as evidenced by the large number of published and peer-reviewed papers on the subject.

How the Aquamarine Wave Power System Works

The Aquamarine Power Oyster system creates a pumping system using huge “paddles” or “shells” that swing back and forth in the waves and pump water to onshore turbines that spin and produce electricity (see video below).

According to Aquamarine’s team of engineers, coming up with an efficient technology involves a combination of finding optimum sites to install the technology and refining the design through an endless series of testing periods. With each new installation and each new upgrade, Aquamarine’s wave power system is producing better and better results.

The reason for harnessing wave power isn’t hard to understand as the world is mostly filled with oceans. The need for sustainable energy resources makes wave power, using nearshore waves to convert wave energy to drive hydroelectric turbines, a thing of beauty.

The following video shows the Aquamarine Wave Power system in action:

The following gallery shows Aquamarine’s Oyster system:

 

David Russell Schilling

David enjoys writing about high technology and its potential to make life better for all who inhabit planet earth.

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