Christopher Olson of Houston, Texas, displays one of his prototypes for transferring ocean wave energy into electricity. His inspiration came from surfing on hurricane waves.

Written by Carolyn Lieberg

Moving water has been a source of power for centuries, but inventors continue to develop new ways to translate this movement into electrical energy.

The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, based in Washington, DC, promotes the commercialization of technologies that harness water power, including that from ocean waves. Carolyn Elefant, who founded and runs the group with Sean O’Neill, says “I’ve been working in this industry for a long time and this is the longest period of sustained activity I’ve seen.”

OREC seeks funding and works for favorable regulations, including tax credits, for developers of alternative methods of capturing energy. “We want to help companies deploy projects in a way that is environmentally sound and structurally safe.”

The group is sponsoring a global conference in April “to see what’s going on abroad and understand how other systems are working.” Her optimism is tempered in the short run by the US election. “A new administration will begin in less than a year, and that has potential to slow things down.”

Technology continues to be improved in conventional hydropower methods, such as the high dams being built in China, which are producing electricity equal to the burning of 70 million tons of coal annually, or the ongoing efforts to preserve salmon runs with modified fish ladders on the dams on the Columbia River.

In addition to modifying conventional methods of trapping the power in rivers, inventors are developing devices to use the ocean waves. One such inventor is Texan Christopher Olson, a portrait painter by training who also loves to surf.

During the day or two before Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the hurricane was a roiling storm, and Olson was one of a dozen or so surfers in his area taking advantage of its powerful waves. As he looked over at the other surfers, Olson thought how much they looked like pistons going up and down.

That thought nagged at him and soon led him to an electronics store to ask how generators were made. “The owner taught me, and I made generators for six months.” With his new knowledge, Olson set to work on a contraption that would capture the wave energy.

One of his challenges was to “get hold of the back half of the wave.” As a surfer, he had been upended enough to understand that part of the power. His device – in various stages of its development – is on 13 videos on youtube.

Now, 46 prototypes later and with continued publicity about his success, Olson receives telephone calls daily from Africa and elsewhere in the world about his wave energy device. Last Thursday he was packaging a few for El Salvador. “That country has made maximum use of its river power and its geothermal resources. It’s having to import diesel, which, as you know, has reached over $100 per barrel.” El Salvador is an ideal location to make use of the energy in ocean waves, because, says Olson, “No place in the country is more than 40 miles from the coast.”

Olson’s company, SwellFuel, is one of many entrepreneurial ventures in the world of renewable energy. The owner is not interested in gaining funding from huge sources or using his device on the grid. Yet. “A couple thousand islands import diesel daily. We want to serve hotel-resorts in those locations and help them meet their individual needs.” Olson believes this route of appealing to those with small needs makes more sense for his small company.

“We don’t have to make a 20-year study to find out if they’re going to kill crabs.

If there’s a problem, we’ll find out. Working on a small scale lets us learn about a lot of the complications. We can grow into a power company later.”

Olson said his device is already being used by those who work to restore coral reefs and those who need to pump water into oyster beds. The portability and lack of disruption to the surrounding water makes it an ideal solution for these low-power needs.

Another company making inroads in wave technology is Pelamis Wave Power in Scotland. The company’s bright orange tubes are the size of small train cars and are linked in similar fashion, running perpendicular to the shore. The system may be used in what will likely be the world’s largest capacity wave farm, under development off Scotland.

In 2005, one fifth of all energy used was from renewable sources, with hydropower contributing nearly 90 percent of that amount. Most countries in the world use some form of hydropower for their electricity, but five countries – Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the USA – are responsible for over half of the hydropower produced. In the coming years, many areas of the world have a great potential to extract energy from water; Africa may see as much as a ten-fold increase, Asia – three-fold, and South America – double.

Another source of hydropower is tides. Tidal barrage or entrainment power plants, as they are called, are most effective in those places where the tidal range is largest. In Canada’s Bay of Fundy, the tide slides in 10 m. – an inviting location for a plant. In northern France, where there is a 7 m range, Brittany has had a power plant in place since 1996.

Similar to the sentiments expressed by Elefant of OREC, Ian Bryden of the Institute for Energy systems at the University of Edinburgh says, “There is more interest in entrainment systems now than at any time in the past 20 years and it is increasingly likely that new barrage and lagoon developments will be seen.”

The plants work somewhat like gates on a lock, keeping water out until enough has accumulated to cause a forceful entry, and then holding it back for the same forceful exit. The turbines either need to be set to work both ways or arranged for half to operate on entry and half on departure.

Other potential sites include Nova Scotia, Murmansk, and the East China Sea. Tidal entrainment plants are often combined with roads or train beds to make construction dual purpose. Since the systems are relatively efficient, more tidal plants are expected to be built in the coming decades.

It is likely that new inventions and refinements will continue in the coming decades. As SwellFuels’ Christopher Olson says, “It’s time for a big change in energy production. You have to move on. You can’t expect things to stay the same.”