Sunday, May 27, 2007

IJMW: Wave power

[Great Wave off of Kanagawa by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai]


Was trolling a bit this morning, cruising for blog fodder when I found this article on Oregon's wave power potential.

Everything has an impact, and I'm sure there are environmental ramifications to wave power generation we couldn't even imagine right now (like wind power turbines chopping up raptors). But to not look into this technology does seem reckless. The wave power movement is far advanced in Northern Europe where it has a 20-year jump on us. The fact that 50% of the U.S. population lives along coasts bodes well from a design perspective in that the energy generated won't have to travel far.

It's a good article, and I'm curious to see what develops.

3 comments:

Marty said...

Wave power is something that really intrigues me. The designs are actually very simple and supply a good bit of power for amount of coastline taken up. And as far as that goes, most I have seen pictures of you wouldnt even notice if you weren't looking for it.

Bpaul said...

I haven't done much research in them, I imagine that the sand would be the biggest problem... moves like crazy on the coast -- "geomorphology" and all that.

Definitely a totally predictable, steady source of energy tho.

Shocho said...

/wave

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I am in favor of developing wave power, although we have no waves in Denver. We do use the wind, however.