This was towed up to the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, which are home to the European Marine Energy Centre, a government-funded test center for wave machines. It had the network connections in place for tests that would prove impossibly expensive if each fledgling wave machine company had to finance them itself.

"That led in 2005 to our first order -- for three machines -- from Portuguese company Enersis. We had these three machines in the water and generating power to the grid in 2008," said Carcas. "Then things began to go wrong."

Tight money, but it begins to flow
Enersis was taken over in late 2005 by Australia's second-biggest investment bank, Babcock & Brown, which then ran into major trouble as its share capital crumbled in mid-2008. It was forced by its creditors to offload its acquisitions before going into voluntary liquidation in early 2009.

At the same time, the unique suspended mooring system for each machine developed a fault, and instead of floating about 15 meters below the tethered snakes, the system began to sink and drag the snakes down with it. The company also found unexpected wear on the hydraulic pistons, also called rams.

These problems were fixed by Pelamis under its service contract with Enersis, but it was bad publicity and even worse timing because of the financial woes of the owner. An investment group including EDP -- Energias de Portugal -- eventually moved in to take over the project in July 2009.

"It had a much more measured approach than Babcock & Brown, which wanted to go for major expansion," said Carcas. "It took the view that the experience gained from the first three machines had essentially been a learning and proving process. And we were already working on the second-generation machine putting that knowledge to practical use."

Those first three machines are currently sitting in harbour in Portugal, their fate undecided.

Meanwhile, Pelamis is looking into the future. Once sea trials for the new snake are completed, the second-generation machine will be towed up to Orkney and linked up to the European Marine Energy Centre to start generating clean power to the grid.

Money has always been tight, but now the company has a core of 16 institutional investors that over the years have put £43 million ($63 million) into it, and it has so far generated £20 million ($29.3 million) of orders.

One way to protect pristine environments
And to make it better, the utilities are starting to come knocking. E.ON and Scottish Power have both recently won offshore leases from the U.K. government to use Pelamis technology, and the company itself has secured its own lease -- obviously with the goal of using its own machines.

Added together, they come to 150 megawatts of potential power -- enough to power 75,000 homes.

Carcas is sure that the United Kingdom, which has been calculated to have triple the potential wave power it needs to produce all of the country's electricity, will have its first wave farm within five years.

Starting with a farm of, say, 10 to 20 megawatts, he sees that climbing steeply into the hundreds of megawatts. But there is a problem. The U.K. government support scheme that gave wave power its vital boost in 1998 has gone, and the wave power industry now only gets the same level of support as offshore wind.

"My message to the U.K.'s new government, which after all did describe itself as the greenest the country had ever had, is, 'Give us the support we need. The time is right. Delays and procrastination will be the death of us,'" Carcas said.

7 Comments

1. 1. gunslingor 04:01 PM 6/3/10

   Nice, get these babies up to 5MWs ASAP and Roll them out already!!!

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2. 2. dwbd 11:47 PM 6/3/10

   David Mackay thoroughly analyzed Wave Power for Britain, which has one of the best wave resources of any nation, in his paper Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air. His conclusion, by covering half of Britain''s coastline with really efficient Wave Generators, you might get maximum 4 kwh/day per person vs the 195 kwh/day that the average Britain uses or the 260 kwh/day the average American uses (total energy consumption per capita). He admits that is really optimistic. Using the real world Pelamis wave generator that's reduced to 1.2 kwh/day per person. And uses 1000 kg steel per avg kw, vs offshore Wind of 510 kg steel per avg kw, and Old Nuclear uses 40 kg steel per avg kw. A solid, sobering analysis of the Pelamis Wave Energy generator here:
   
   http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/25/tcase5/
   
   "...The annual output of an AP1000 nuclear reactor rated at 1,154 MWe and run at 92% capacity factor would be 9,300 GWh. So, going by the manufacturer’s data, we would need to deploy 3,450 Pelamis machines to generate the equivalent yearly energy of one AP1000, arranged in an array 0.6 km wide and extending along 180 km of high-energy coastline. (Note that these are projected, not measured figures - the real world is often tougher)..."

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3. 3. IMPORTER50 06:36 PM 6/4/10

   Harvesting expending energy from the worlds largest man made power source
   What is the greatest waste of man made expending energy on the planet today? AUTOMOTIVE VEHICLES How can we more efficiently HARVEST the energy currently being expended? Building Vehicle Energy Harvester (VEH)/(A Lead-Free Piezoelectric Device)
   How it works
   The system is based on the scientific principle that mechanical movement can be converted to electricity. The visible surface of the VEH is a rectangular unit (8 inches deep by 7 feet wide), flush with the roads surface, running from one side of the lane to the other. The surface of the unit is made of a thick industrial grade non-skid rubber, it is flush with the road, in the front and back, and elevated 1 inch in the center by a 3/4 wide steel bar running underneath the 7 ft wide rubber section. The rubber is bordered on all sides by a heavy duty non-skid steel frame (2 inches wide on all sides), looking similar to a green light traffic trigger seen at traffic light intersections. Simply put, as the vehicles tires run over the VEH, the weight of the vehicle, drives the steel bar in a downward motion, like an engine piston, the downward/linear motion of the piston is converted into rotational motion by the crankshaft via a connecting rod, ultimately, spinning the crankshaft at 2000-4000 rpms. On busy highways, with thousands of cars running over the units at 65 mph, during certain periods of the day and night, the amount of electricity created by each VEH would be phenomenal. Heavy duty electrical cables would be used to connect the VEH to either the local power grid or individual power stations for local distribution. The next question, Is this electricity free? In the beginning, the VEHs might have to be located under roadways that have a downward incline. If they are, this energy source could be considered free due to the use of the gravity effect causing additional momentum from the downward incline vs. a flat or upwardly inclining road, which would require the vehicles to expend a very small amount of additional energy to get over the elevated section, and would therefore add COST to the system. (even though that cost is a fraction of a cent, it must be considered, from a legal standpoint). How this viewpoint is finally resolved will be the issue.
   The potential electricity created with zero ADDITIONAL EMISSIONS could help provide a large portion of the world with a whole new source of energy. It could also provoke new ways of thinking, regarding alternative energy.

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4. 4. Mr. Sol Biderman 07:05 PM 6/4/10

   Brilliant. The company can obtain auxiliary revenues by charging admission to the wave farm information center.
   Mr. Sol Biderman

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5. 5. sanoran 06:37 PM 6/7/10

   Sadly, another unrealistic idea. Energy is still cheap, and producing, hauling, installing, etc of these devices is going to be far more expensive when energy is not cheap. So yes, these and similar machines like windmills will indeed produce electricity, but they will never come even close to replacing Oil.
   
   The energy density of oil, combined with ease of transport makes it the only energy that humans can really utilize and make wealth out of thin-air. Everything else is just a 'project'.
   
   This is definitely innovative and interesting, but completely irrelevant in terms replacing Oil/Natural Gas as a source of energy.

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6. 6. leggedfish 08:00 AM 6/10/10

   The nice thing about this idea is that the "snakes" theoretically should be able to be unmoored and moved in the event of a hurricane, and will avoid getting damaged, unlike immobile offshore wind turbines.

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7. 7. Sisko 05:53 PM 6/14/10

   dwbd's comments and analysis seems well stated. This seems to be yet another idea that will not actually be commerically viable.

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