04-16-2008, 07:21 AM
|
|
Active Enthusiast
|
|
Real Name: Ken Grubb
Location: Puyallup, WA
Hybrids: None, yet
Posts: 70
|
|
Surf's Up!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...energy21m.html
OLYMPIA — The waters off Makah Bay near the tip of Washington's Olympic Peninsula could become home to the world's first commercial wave-energy project.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday issued its first license for a so-called hydrokinetic energy project to British Columbia-based Finavera Renewables, a company working to develop wind- and wave-energy projects in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and South Africa.
If all goes as planned, Finavera's Makah Bay Wave Pilot Project would begin generating enough electricity to supply at least 150 homes by 2011.
http://www.finavera.com/files/2006-1...%20Licence.pdf
The Makah Bay pilot power plant will consist of four (4) low-profile moored buoys, AquaBuOY, placed 3.2 nautical miles offshore in water depths of 150-250 feet, to transform wave energy into usable electrical energy. The Makah Bay pilot power plant is projected to deliver 1500MWh annually and projected to offset 645 Mt CO2 annually using 0.43 Kg CO2/KWh emissions factor.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/344430_wave21.html
The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that waves off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts could produce from 250 to 500 terawatt-hours per year. A terawatt-hour is a million megawatt-hours, or a billion kilowatt-hours. The nation uses about 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity every year.
6 to 12 percent of the nation's electric consumption from the Pacific coastline alone. Hmmmmmmm.
|
