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Ocean Power Technologies to Deploy Reedsport PowerBuoy in Spring 2013

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Ocean Power Technologies, Inc (Nasdaq: OPTT) (“OPT” and “the Company”), a leading wave energy technology company, today announced that its utility-scale PowerBuoy® off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon, is expected to be deployed in spring 2013.

Final testing of the PowerBuoy has continued to be on track for completion ahead of final assembly and readiness for deployment in October 2012, as announced previously. Subject to weather conditions, the Company had thereafter planned to tow the completed device approximately 300 miles from the Portland area dry dock to its deployment site about 2.5 nautical miles west of Reedsport.

The early onset of unfavorable weather conditions in recent days has significantly impacted the installation of moorings. In addition, uncertainty regarding weather conditions over the October timeframe has increased the risks of incurring substantial deployment vessel “standby” costs and adverse safety conditions while transiting the buoy over the distance from the dry dock to the deployment site. The buoy itself is designed to perform well during severe weather once installed, but during transit there are concerns for towing stability in the harsh conditions now more frequent. Furthermore, following deployment there is a required period of time for commissioning the PowerBuoy for full operation, which also may need some level of marine operations.

Charles Dunleavy, Chief Executive Officer of OPT, said: “Our partners and staff have worked very hard to enable completion of the buoy before the harsh Oregon winter sets in. However, risk management plans for marine operations have to be sufficiently flexible to cope with changes in weather conditions, and safety concerns are paramount. As with all our PowerBuoy deployments, we will proceed carefully, and we have assessed the risks of deployment and commissioning activities during the upcoming weeks. We are not prepared to compromise the safety of crews or their vessels, or the OPT PowerBuoy system itself enroute to the site and during the deployment and commissioning. We remain committed to developing this wave energy project, and this process will serve to enhance our future deployments. In light of the increased weather, safety and cost risks, it is the right decision to plan for deployment next spring.”

Mayor Keith Tymchuk of Reedsport, Oregon added: “This is a prudent decision as people on the coast here know that the weather at this time of year is challenging. It is best for the safety of the crews to do it once and do it right.”

The PowerBuoy, which incorporates a proprietary new direct drive power take off system, will be the first of up to 10 proposed devices that are licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the grid-connected Reedsport OPT Wave Park. The project size of 1.5 megawatts of electricity would be enough to power about 1,000 homes.

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Wave Test Site Narrowed To Two Oregon Towns

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012
By Pete Danko

Possible sites for the Pacific Marine Energy Center – which aims to become the first grid-connected wave energy testing facility in the United States – have been narrowed from four Oregon communities to two, with Reedsport and Newport the finalists, according to officials at the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center.

The announcement comes just weeks after the Oregon State University-based researchers heralded the deployment of the Ocean Sentinel, a test buoy with no grid connection. That was a big step forward for U.S. wave energy, and for Oregon in its goal of building a thriving industry in the state. But in the long run, a grid-connected test facility similar to the European Marine Energy Centre in Scotland is considered a vital piece to the wave energy puzzle.

Wave energy device at European Marine Energy Centre (image via Aquamarine Power)

The planned Oregon center would have four berths, connected to the grid, where wave energy developers could plug in their devices for testing.

Officials leading the effort have said they’ll need $8 million to really get the project rolling – and more than that to build it – and are awaiting final approval of $4 million from the Department of Energy. The state-backed Oregon Wave Energy Trust is also a partner on the project, and the European center is playing a role, too.

WET-NZ Device tested off Oregon coast (image via Pete Danko/EarthTechling)

Key factors in choosing the two finalist were “distance to the ocean depth from shore, access to support services and onshore infrastructure, community support and overall costs,” officials said.

In the final round, the officials said they’ll weigh Newport’s strengths in infrastructure (including a nearby electrical substation), transportation and community support against Reedsport’s strengths of having deeper water nearer to shore and supportive community leaders.

Strong community support will likely be vital, whichever town is chosen, as officials navigate a tricky approval process. Concerns about wave power have been expressed by commercial and recreational fishing interests, environmentalists and coastal residents worried about ocean views being marred. At the same time, there’s widespread hope that wave energy could be jobs booster in Oregon.

The private company Ocean Power Technologies recently won approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to place up to 10 grid-connected buoys in the Pacific near Reedsport. An important piece to the license granted was an agreement OPT had reached in 2010 with 11 federal and Oregon state agencies as well as three nongovernmental stakeholders .

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Wave Power Anticipation Builds In Oregon

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012
By Pete Danko

We bounced over four-foot swells outside Yaquina Bay, speeding along in Crackerjack, Capt. Jack Craven’s 43-foot charter. It was a calm early September day by the rambunctious standards of the Oregon coast, a stretch of the North American continent frequently battered by waves taller than your house – even if you live in a two-story. But even a quiet Pacific pulses with awesome power.

“If we could just grab a tiny piece of this energy,” I found myself thinking – an unoriginal thought if there ever was one. The idea of pinching off a little Pacific power has excited interest for years, and had in fact led to the development we were headed out to see: the Ocean Sentinel test pod and its temporary companion, the New Zealand born and Oregon schooledwave energy converter called WET-NZ.

wet-nzThe WET-NZ, off the Oregon coast (image via Pete Danko/EarthTechling)

A handful of scientists from the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at Oregon State University, who put the Ocean Sentinel in the water, was aboard the Crackerjack, along with Justin Klure, an executive at Northwest Energy Innovations, the Oregon company that retooled the Kiwi WET-NZ into the second-generation, half-scale test model being put through its paces 2.5 miles northwest of Yaquina Head.

Reporters were along for the ride, as well, most of them getting their introduction to this new wave energy thing that suddenly was being talked about in Oregon in a big way – bigger, perhaps, than it really ought to at this point.

Earlier this month, The New York Times wrote a story about the planned upcoming deployment of an Ocean Power Technologies wave energy converting buoy off the coast near Reedsport, about 70 miles south of Newport. Shortly thereafter, The Oregonian, the Portland media heavyweight, editorialized breathlessly that because wave energy might prove to be a “runaway success at sea” like the “near-overnight sensation of wind farms,” state regulators needed to “get ahead of the wave power rush” that “could test Oregon’s capacity to plan and regulate ocean use to the satisfaction of multiple stakeholders and for the protection of fisheries and marine ecosystems.”

Whoa. Deep breath, Oregonian.

The wind power that became a “near-overnight sensation” had been operating commercially and at a large scale in California for decades before it busted out in Oregon. All renewable technologies are constantly evolving, but the basic format of wind power was long well-established before the boom of the past several years.

Wave? It’s commonly said that wave energy is in its infancy, but that might be overstating its development. Conception has occurred. The fetus is growing. Birth? We haven’t gotten there yet.

“We’ve got so much to learn,” Sean Moran, manager of the wave energy ocean test facilities for NNMREC, told me dockside before we headed out to sea. “There are tons of different designs that function very differently. We don’t really know what’s going to work and what isn’t – there’s a lot of work to do.”

Not that Moran isn’t excited – he’s in the field because he’s jazzed about the possibilities. But what was clear from the NNMREC and OSU scientists was that even more than hoping to help wave energy developers improve their wares, they’re interested in making sure wave energy unfolds in Oregon in a way that doesn’t screw the environment, commercial fishers and crabbers or those who use the ocean for recreation.

The OSU researchers are monitoring electromagnetic fields and acoustical impacts, as well as effects on sediment, invertebrates and fish.

“This is why we’re here,” Moran said. “It’s an opportunity to learn, to go forward in a way that makes sense for all the stakeholders here. Wave energy is just one player and it’s going to have to fit into a complex picture.”

ocean sentinel, nnmrecOcean Sentinel (image via Pete Danko/EarthTechling)

A representative of the Oregon Anglers told The Times, “Our greatest concern is that they don’t do what they did with dams — put a lot of them in the ocean and then just stand back and see what happens.”

Anglers and others are wise to keep a close eye on the wave developers, but the difference in pace and scale between what’s going on with wave energy and what happened with Northwest dam building is night and day.

Out of nowhere in the 1930s, Roosevelt’s Bureau of Reclamation built the biggest structure in the history of the world when it made Grand Coulee Dam (without fish ladders, by the way, robbing the Colville tribe of the salmon that were the centerpiece of their culture).  By 1984, there were 14 dams on the Columbia, and more than that on its tributary the Snake, forever changing ecosystems on a massive scale.

There is very little chance of wave energy having that irretrievable impact on the ocean. Even if the industry were ready, there is no Roosevelt to put thousands of wave energy converters in the ocean. This is an industry — a fascinating, exciting industry, but also a wannabe industry — that is inching along.

The New Zealand group behind the WET-NZ deployed a proof of concept device six years ago. Quarter-scale devices came five years later. Even if the Oregon arm of the project goes well, they’re still at least another iteration – with loads of testing along the way – away from nailing down their design.

And Ocean Power Technologies, yes, it will put a 150-kilowatt buoy in the water, weather permitting, in early October. It took OPT years to get its license from the feds to put 10 buoys in the water, but even that won’t happen until the first buoy survives and produces power for a year (and a grid connection won’t happen until then, at the earliest, as well).

And hanging over all this is the question of whether wave energy can be anywhere in the neighborhood of competitive in what could be a long era of cheap natural gas (and with solar and wind both falling in cost). Investors aren’t exactly flocking to it, and government support, already modest, doesn’t figure to blossom. OPT will need more help if it’s to get those other nine buoys in the water. The state-backed Oregon Wave Energy Trust is doing what it can, and the U.S. Department of Energy has been chipping in, but the years ahead do not figure to be flush times for the state government or the feds.

Meanwhile, everyone is watching. The fishing community, environmentalists, scientists – even some journalists. Out on the water earlier this month, it was hard not to feel the excitement about the great possibilities. But back ashore, the reality of the long, fraught process wave power faces is clear. Deep breaths, everyone.

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Wave energy test up and running on the Oregon coast

Friday, September 7th, 2012
By Ted Sickinger

After years of optimistic pronouncements, haggling with coastal residents and fishermen, and one project that landed in Davy Jones’ locker, a new wave of Oregon’s renewable energy experiment is taking shape off the coast.

Only time will tell whether this science project can gather momentum, or the necessary funding it will need to reach commercial viability.

In late August, researchers at Oregon State University launched the first of what they hope will be a fleet of wave energy devices at their new test bed two miles offshore of Yaquina Head.

The Wave Energy Technology-New Zealand or Wet-NZ buoy, has been bobbing lazily in the summers swells for two weeks, sending reams of data and a trickle of electricity via underwater umbilical to the Ocean Sentinel, a floating battery pack and data hub anchored nearby.

A five-week test will allow the prototype’s owner, Northwest Energy Innovations, Inc., to gather performance data on the $750,000 prototype and its mooring system. The plan is to pluck the device out of the water before it meets the full fury of fall on the Oregon coast, then go on to develop a full-scale model.

OSU scientists are hovering nearby, dropping their hydrophones and related equipment into surrounding waters to measure the device’s acoustic footprint, electromagnetic frequencies and impact on sea life, whether its bottom dwellers or migrating gray whales. Meanwhile, the Ocean Sentinel monitors the strength of wind waves and the current, in tandem with the power buoy’s output.

“It’s naive to think there will be no impact from these devices,” said Belinda Batten, director Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at OSU. “We can help answer some of those important questions.”

OSU is one of three federally funded research centers addressing the technical, environmental and social challenges of wave and tidal energy. Established in 2008, its aim is to provide standardized facilities that commercial developers can use to deploy and test power buoys without a protracted siting process.

Wave buoys have been controversial on the coast, and the test site was chosen after two years of discussion with crabbers, fishermen, state agencies, wave energy developers and scientists.

For developers, the tests can provide crucial information on their devices’ durability, efficiency in different wave conditions, and other maintenance issues and costs. The WetNZ is the first prototype moored at the Yaquina Head site. But the center hopes to score another $25 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for a second Oregon test zone with berths for four buoys — this one fully connected to the electrical grid on land. Batten said she expects an answerin the next couple months, though it could depend on the election and congressional jockeying over spending cuts.

Meanwhile, the center says more tests will be forthcoming. There are myriad designs to maximize the extraction of the kinetic energy in waves. Some are for near shore deployment, others for deeper waters. Some float, others sit on the sea floor. Mechanical systems vary widely. Developers are looking to capture the most energy at the least cost. The answer may depend on location.

Oregon already has some experience in the field. In 2007, a prototype buoy deployed off Agate Beach in Newport started taking on water, then sank in 150 feet of water before its owner could haul it out of the water.

Not surprising. Oregon, with its West Coast exposure, and distance from the equator, has one of the strongest and most reliable “wave resources” on the globe, researchers say.

Whether that can be harnessed and delivered at a reasonable cost remains to be seen.

The WetNZ, largely funded by taxpayers in United States and New Zealand, can only produce 20 kilowatts of electricity. A commercial scale device would require 20 to 50 times that output, according to Justin Klure, a partner with the company.

“If you can’t produce electricity at a competitive price, this industry won’t be around for the long term,” Klure said. “It’s nascent. The only way you start to know that is to put these devices into the water and see how they work.”

Commercial efforts aren’t far off, however.

Weather permitting, New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies plans to moor its own “utility-scale device” about 2 1/2 miles off Reedsport next month and see how mother nature treats it through an Oregon winter.

The Power Buoy 150 is a behemoth. Looking like a cross between the Seattle Space Needle and an outsized toilet float, the buoy is 145 feet tall, 40 feet wide and will weigh in at 200 tons when the company tows it away from Vigor Marine’s dock in Portland for the trip to Coos Bay.

The initial buoy is being built in Clackamas at Oregon Iron Works, with additional work by Vigor Industrial in Portland and an American Bridge Manufacturing plant in Reedsport.

As its name implies, it has a generating capacity of 150 kilowatts, the equivalent to about 150 average homes if it were connected to the grid and constantly generating its maximum capacity. As it is, the first buoy — with a redesigned mechanical system from one deployed earlier the coast of Scotland — will dissipate the energy it produces, sending it into an onboard heat sink for its first year of operation.

OPT received a federal license in August to moor 10 of the devices off Reedsport and connect them to the grid. But the license requires one year of operation for the initial buoy before OPT can run electrical cables and proceed with the project. The company also needs additional funding to complete the project, and executives say it will likely be at least two years before the next deployment.

So what does all this mean at your light switch?

Not much, for now.

The PB150, according to past reports quoting company executives, was slated to cost some $4 million to develop and build. The company has a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the Reedsport project, an Oregon business energy tax credit worth $900,000, and $420,000 from the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, which has the right to purchase the power.

Company executives and researchers talk of someday producing electricity for about 15 cents per kilowatt hour — about twice the price that utility customers pay today, and several times the wholesale price of power. But scaling up a wave farm using today’s buoys would carry a ludicrous price tag.

“In the early stages, until you get into volume production, it’s certainly expensive,” said Michael Kelly, OPT’s vice president of operations. “Whatever the price is to build it today, that’s not going to be the price to build it tomorrow.”

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Oregon should get ahead of the wave power rush

Friday, September 7th, 2012
By The Oregonian Editorial Board

Oregon Iron Works in Clackamas has been at work building the prototype wave-energy buoy that will be situated a few miles at sea off Reedsport. Next month, a 40-foot-wide yellow buoy that will extend more than 100 feet down into the sea and rise another 30 from the surface will be anchored 2 1/2 miles off Reedsport, sending electricity to shore via an ocean-bottom cable. If it works, this one buoy could be followed by more and change the way things look and operate off Oregon’s 363-mile coastline for decades to come.

There are several good things about this. Oregon State University, long dedicated to wave-energy research, solidifies and perhaps expands its position as a leader in a new technology. Oregon Lottery dollars help float the nonprofit Oregon Wave Energy Trust, which paid more than $400,000 to the New Jersey company that designed the buoy — yet Clackamas-based Oregon Iron Works pays dozens of Oregonians to build it with the help of workers at Vigor Industrial in Portland and American Bridge Manufacturing in Reedsport. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy backs the experiment because of its promise as a potential new and renewable source of electricity. And Reedsport, if things go right, will enjoy world bragging rights as the center of a grand experiment — all while angling to be the site of a new Pacific marine research center, a kick-starter for its economy.

That it’s happening in Oregon is no accident. Few stretches of the Pacific deliver the energy-packed, wind-driven surface disturbances as the waters off Oregon’s coast. Yoking the waves to give up energy, however, is a gnarly engineering feat that has produced radically different buoy designs, some that would create far taller structures and others that would place buoys closer to shore and be more visible for it.

But much could go wrong in this first key outing, which follows an August launch by OSU of a rig to test the electricity-generating output of a separate buoy under development by a New Zealand company and floating a few miles off Newport. Nobody knows how well the massive, wired-to-the-grid buoy off Reedsport will work. Part of its structure is designed to move up-and-down like a piston to generate the charge. Cables tethering the 260-ton structure to the seafloor must hold — hence the early promise from the designers that the buoy will withstand a 100-year storm. Meanwhile, the buoy’s New Jersey developer won federal approval only weeks ago to place and wire to the grid as many as 10 such buoys in a half-mile-by-half-mile patch of ocean off Reedsport.

While robust electrical output would be a breakthrough — right-priced fossil-free electricity is the nation’s new gold — it could test Oregon’s capacity to plan and regulate ocean use to the satisfaction of multiple stakeholders and for the protection of fisheries and marine ecosystems. What will floating power parks look like? How will the interests of fishers and crabbers, essential to coastal economies, be protected? What about shippers and boaters? And who really knows whether electromagnetic fields created near buoys or their underwater power lines might interfere with, say, a whale’s migration abilities?

Extensive amendments to the state’s Territorial Sea Plan need completion and adoption before the year is out — this to get ahead of runaway success at sea. The amendments — well-drawn so far and designed to bring all pertinent agencies and user groups to the table before a project moves forward — will ensure that floating power parks do not become the near-overnight sensation of wind farms, some better situated than others and promoted by costly subsidies.

Wave power, after nearly a decade of dreaming and planning, seems ready to crest. Done right, it represents Oregon’s best opportunity to deliver a needed new technology that could attract private investment and show profit while demonstrating that innovation and resource conservation are compatible. That’s quite a lot, considering it starts with a lone buoy off Reedsport.

Measured steps by state regulators in the coming months will ensure we get it right if the rush is truly unleashed.

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NYT takes note of Oregon’s wave energy momentum

Thursday, September 6th, 2012
By Christina Williams

The New York Times, which nurtures a not-so-secret crush on Portland’s food scene, took note Monday of another of Oregon’s features: Its early leadership in the field of wave energy.

Summed up nicely with quotes from Oregon Wave Energy Trust’s Jason Busch, the New York Times story by Kirk Johnson points out that the momentum behind wave energy technology in Oregon is growing fast. From Ocean Power Technology’s recently licensed Reedsport project — the first commercial wave energy deployment in the U.S. — to the payoff last month of years of effort at Oregon State University’s Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center to get buoys in the water. The Ocean Sentinel test equipment launched two weeks ago is conducting real-world tests on actual buoys.

The story quotes António Sarmento, a professor at Lisbon Technical University and the director of the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal.

“Wave energy is very expensive to develop, and they need to see that there is a potential worldwide,” Sarmento told the New York Times. “In that sense, having the first commercial deployment in the U.S. is very, very positive.”

The story also covers the topic explored recently by the Portland Business Journal’s Andy Giegerich, the effort to map Oregon’s coastline and determine ideal spots for wave energy use and identify which areas should be protected from such development.

There are many competing interests in the marine mapping fray — from fishermen to environmental groups to renewable energy advocates — but coming to an agreement to allow Oregon’s early groundwork in wave energy to come to fruition is crucial.

It’s a fantastic chance for Oregon’s coastline to become known for something in addition to world-class scenery and proximity to Portland’s food carts: world-leading renewable energy leadership.

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Wave Energy Making A Splash In Oregon

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Energy development groups around the world have their eyes pinpointed and are anxiously awaiting the launch of a 100 foot long and 260 ton buoy off the shores of Oregon. That is where the New Jersey based company Ocean Power Technologies will launch the first commercially licensed grid-connected wave-energy device in the nation.

The company is in the final stages of testing and if all goes well, the large buoy will be taken out in a barge for anchoring about 2 ½ miles from the city of Reedsport. “All eyes are on the O.P.T. buoy,” said Jason Busch, the executive director of the Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a nonprofit state-financed group that has spent $10 million in the last six years on scientific wave-energy research and grants, including more than $430,000 to Ocean Power Technologies alone.

Making lots of electricity on the buoy and getting it to shore to turn on lights would be great, Mr. Busch said. Approximately 1,000 homes can be powered by the buoy.

The onboard computer in each buoy, in communication with an array of small devices called wave riders that float farther out in the ocean, “tunes” to each incoming wave, adjusting the way the giant internal shaft rides up and down as the swell passes through. The up-and-down motion of the shaft creates the electricity, which goes to shore through a seabed cable.

What happens off the coast of Oregon could affect the flow of private investment by bigger renewable energy companies that have mostly waited close to shore while smaller energy companies have struggled in the high seas. Ocean Power Technologies also will be seeking money to build more generators.

Furthering the development of Ocean Power Technologies, O.P.T announced that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate to perform a new round of in-ocean tests on its Autonomous PowerBuoy® to further demonstrate its use for ocean surveillance.

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Project Aims to Harness the Power of Waves

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012
By Kirk Johnson

About 15 years ago, this environmentally conscious state with a fir tree on its license plates began pushing the idea of making renewable energy from the ocean waves that bob and swell on the Pacific horizon. But then one of the first test-buoy generators, launched with great fanfare, promptly sank. It was not a good start.

But time and technology turned the page, and now the first commercially licensed grid-connected wave-energy device in the nation, designed by a New Jersey company, Ocean Power Technologies, is in its final weeks of testing before a planned launch in October. The federal permit for up to 10 generators came last month, enough, the company says, to power about 1,000 homes. When engineers are satisfied that everything is ready, a barge will carry the 260-ton pioneer to its anchoring spot about two and a half miles offshore near the city of Reedsport, on the central coast.

“All eyes are on the O.P.T. buoy,” said Jason Busch, the executive director of the Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a nonprofit state-financed group that has spent $10 million in the last six years on scientific wave-energy research and grants, including more than $430,000 to Ocean Power Technologies alone. Making lots of electricity on the buoy and getting it to shore to turn on lights would be great, Mr. Busch said. Riding out the storm-tossed seas through winter? Priceless. “It has to survive,” he said.

Adding to the breath-holding nature of the moment, energy experts and state officials said, is that Oregon is also in the final stages of a long-term coastal mapping and planning project that is aiming to produce, by late this year or early next, a blueprint for where wave energy could be encouraged or discouraged based on potential conflicts with fishing, crabbing and other marine uses.

The project’s leader, Paul Klarin, said wave technology is so new, compared to, say, wind energy, that the designs are like a curiosity shop — all over the place in creative thinking about how to get the energy contained in a wave into a wire in a way that is cost-effective and efficient.

“Some are on the seabed on the ocean floor, some are in the water column, some are sitting on the surface, some project up from the surface into the atmosphere, like wind — many different sizes, many different forms, many different footprints,” said Mr. Klarin, the marine program coordinator at the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. “There’s no one-size-fits-all kind of plan.”

Energy development groups around the world are closely watching what happens here, because success or failure with the first United States commercial license could affect the flow of private investment by bigger companies that have mostly stayed on the shore while smaller entrepreneurs struggled in the surf. Ocean Power Technologies also will be seeking money to build more generators.

“Wave energy is very expensive to develop, and they need to see that there is a potential worldwide,” said António Sarmento, a professor at Lisbon Technical University and the director of the Wave Energy Centre, a private nonprofit group based in Portugal. “In that sense, having the first commercial deployment in the U.S. is very, very positive.”

Here in Oregon, the momentum of research appears to be increasing. Last month, the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center — financed by the United States Department of Energy in collaboration with Oregon State University and the University of Washington — deployed one of the first public wave energy testing systems in the nation, called Ocean Sentinel, about two and a half hours from Portland, in Newport. The first device tested was a half-scale prototype from a New Zealand company.

Fishing industry lobbyists and lawyers worry that a surge of wave energy could repeat what happened when hydroelectricity came to the Pacific Northwest in a big way starting in the 1930s. Builders then did not think through the dense ecological web that nature had devised around the tens of millions of salmon — suddenly blocked from their inland spawning routes — that had over millenniums become a cornerstone species for everything from bears to birds.

“Our greatest concern is that they don’t do what they did with dams — put a lot of them in the ocean and then just stand back and see what happens,” said John Holloway, the secretary of Oregon Anglers, a political action committee for recreational fishing. “We’re advocating a go-slow approach.”

What has not changed is that the Pacific Northwest still has a siren song for wave-energy dreamers in the big, consistent rolling ocean swells that define offshore waters — and make many a boater seasick — from Northern California through Washington State.

“Wave energy is essentially an accumulation of wind energy,” Charles F. Dunleavy, the chief executive at Ocean Power Technologies, said in a telephone interview. In the northern Pacific, he said, consistent winds fuel consistent waves, and the distance they travel in their rolling line creates a huge area of wave energy, or fetch, that a bobbing buoy can capture. Other places with good fetch include some areas off the coasts of Western Europe and South America.

But the project also hinges on squeezing out the tiniest of incremental efficiencies in tapping the waves as they come. On the Ocean Power Technologies buoy, which looks like a giant cannon stuffed with electronics, company engineers pursued an insight that sailors have known in their sea legs since the days of Odysseus: every wave is different.

The onboard computer in each buoy, in communication with an array of small devices called wave riders that float farther out in the ocean, adapts, or “tunes” to each incoming wave, adjusting the way the giant internal shaft rides up and down as the swell passes through. The up-and-down motion of the shaft creates the electricity, which goes to shore through a seabed cable.

In a nod to environmental concerns, the buoy was redesigned to remove all hydraulic fluids, which some critics feared could contaminate the water in the event of an accident; rack-and-pinion gears now drive the mechanics. The three anchoring tethers, said Michael G. Kelly, the vice president of operations at Ocean Power Technologies, were also built to withstand a 100-year storm, but also with enough redundancies that even if two anchors failed the third would be enough to keep the buoy in place.

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Ocean Power to study using wave buoys as surveillance devices

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012
By Erik Siemers

Ocean Power Technologies Inc., the New Jersey company planning a major wave energy project off the Oregon Coast, on Tuesday said it is working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to show how its wave buoys can be used for ocean surveillance.

Pennington, N.J.-based Ocean Power (NASDAQ: OPTT) has reached a research and development agreement with Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directory to deploy one of its PowerBuoy devices off the coast of New Jersey to showcase the effectiveness of its “long duration maritime vessel detection platform.”

The company has also been awarded a $75,000 grant from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. through a technology transfer program to show how the PowerBuoy can be used with several surveillance technologies.

Ocean Power last month announced that that it had received a key license from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for its proposed 1.5-megawatt wave energy park off the coast of Reedsport. The project is now the first wave power station to be issued a FERC license.

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Oceanic power project approved

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012
By Greg Bolt

Wave-generated electricity would be produced by 10 buoys offshore at Reedsport

Federal officials have given the green light to begin installation of 10 electricity-generating buoys off the Oregon Coast, clearing the way for what will be the first wave energy station in the United States.

Ocean Power Technologies, a New Jersey-based company, is close to completing construction of the first of the generating buoys and is expected to tow it to Reedsport for installation later this year. A company spokesman said the first buoy could arrive in October.

Once fully deployed, the 10 buoys should generate 1.5 megawatts of electricity by converting the up-and-down motion of the waves into clean power, which would be fed into the region’s electricity grid through an undersea cable. It should take two to three years to complete build-out of the power station, said Gregory Lennon, senior director of business development for Ocean Power Technology.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently granted the company a 35-year license to operate the offshore station. Company officials said the license reflects not only the potential of wave energy but the collaboration among a variety of interests along the coast and in other parts of the state that moved the project forward.

“The 35-year term of the license demonstrates the commercial potential of wave power, and this will support initiatives to secure financing for the project,” Charles Dunleavy, the company’s chief executive, said in a prepared statement.

“We appreciate the efforts of many who have assisted us during this licensing process and who recognize its positive significance for the economy and environment of Oregon, as well as its coastal communities.”

The first of the buoys is nearing completion at the Oregon Iron Works plant in Clackamas. It will be moved soon to the Columbia River, where it will be launched and tested before being towed to Reedsport.

The 140-foot-tall installations, with just the top 30 feet rising above the water, will be placed 2.5 miles offshore in an area one-quarter-mile square.

Once all buoys are in place, the generating station is expected to produce as much as 1.5 megawatts of power, equivalent to what is used by about 1,000 average homes.

Different companies have taken different approaches to using ocean energy to generate electricity. OPT’s technology involves a huge spar that is moored to the ocean floor and allowed to bob on the swells.

The up-and-down motion of the buoy as it rides ocean waves drives a generator and produces electricity that enters the power grid through an undersea cable. The cable will be tied into the grid at a substation in nearby Gardiner.

Lennon said the company has deployed a similar buoy off the coast of Scotland and has been working with the Navy on a project using smaller versions placed in the ocean near Hawaii. But this will be the first time an array of power-generating buoys has supplied electricity to the grid on a commercial scale.

“This will be the first grid-connected project in the United States of this significant size,” he said.

The company has been working for years not only to fine-tune its design for the generators but also to convince commercial anglers and crabbers, recreational anglers, environmentalists and state and local officials that ocean energy can be harvested without harming other resources. An agreement reached two years ago lays out how the company will work with various interest groups to monitor the station’s effect on ocean resources and respond to any problems.

That agreement has allowed Ocean Power Technology’s relatively modest plan to move forward, but the future of larger offshore power stations remains controversial. The state is developing a map of offshore resources that is expected to identify where additional power stations might be located, but finding places large enough to be commercially viable that don’t also harm commercial and recreational fishing is proving challenging.

Still, the state has become an enthusiastic backer of wave energy.

The Oregon Business Journal said the state has pumped $10 million into wave energy through the nonprofit Oregon Wave Energy Trust, which works with industry to advance the technology in the state. Ocean Power Technology has put another $5 million to $6 million into the project, it said.

Wave energy projects are advancing on several fronts. Oregon State University has joined with the University of Washington to form the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, which is developing a testing infrastructure for wave energy devices, known as the Pacific Marine Testing Center.

Public meetings to consider possible locations for the testing center are being held this week, including one Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Reedsport’s Pacific Auditorium, 2260 Longwood Drive. Sites being considered are Newport, Reedsport, Coos Bay and Camp Rilea near Warrenton.

Several companies have expressed an interest in deploying or testing wave energy devices along Oregon’s coast. OSU currently is working with a New Zealand company on ocean trials for a half-scale prototype device off Newport.

In addition to its Reedsport location, Ocean Power Technology also has taken preliminary steps to establish a larger wave energy station off Coos Bay. That project would produce 50 megawatts of power, but Lennon said what the company learns from operating the Reedsport station will help determine whether to move into the planning phase for a Coos Bay station.

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