wave power for driving anything but a direct mechanical output ( like liquid robotics wave glider) is just stupid.
natural ocean waves are not tides, they are not currents, they are oscillations of the surface of the ocean. they are horrible for providing any substantial amount of energy for coversion to electrochemical, salt-gradients, or other outputs.
dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. every ocean wave project has failed. darpa's micro wave energy project is probably dead already. dumb.

> Wave power for driving anything but a direct mechanical output ( like liquid robotics wave glider) is just stupid
… but it makes for sexy articles, which is why the media keep producing them day in day out… and the general public demonstrates against nuclear power because it's made to think that there are much safer and simpler "solutions" like wind, solar, or wave.
Sigh.

Zevulon, clearly you have not been following tech news very closely. Looking below this very article you can see that there are many projects that are producing real power now. It will probably never be something that powers the whole world, but will reduce the need for fossil fuel supplies. I'm in favor of anything that is cost effective in the long term, and does not pollute.

Hey Zevulon, I have looked at the robot that you talked about, this is pretty nice !
First of all this prototype is not to produce energy...
As you probably don't know there is WAY MORE power in ocean waves compared to tides and it is more dense than solar or wind. This is a great challenge because the waves can change period and amplitude at the same time. But like any new technology, it takes time to commercialize.
The biggest problem for renewable energies is that they are difficult to store it. Coal or hydro is easy, you adjust power directly in function of demand. This is why this principle is interesting because it is producing water which is easy to store in natural or artificial reservoirs.
Finally, it is not because other projects have fail that we need to stop (look at other tech). It failed because they tried to go big quickly and it cost a lot of money.

"will use a simplified energy conversion system with less components" That's FEWER, damn it! Pedantic pet peeve...

This part of the process has me scratching my head: "This builds up pressure and drives oil through a hydraulic motor, which in turns converts the linear motion into rotary motion.
Connected to the motor is a water pump that combines with a reverse osmosis system..."
Essentially what this says is that they use a linear pump to drive a hydraulic motor that drives a rotary pump that pressurizes a reverse osmosis system. If this were electricity that would be like building a generator that uses the gasoline motor to spin a generator head that runs a DC motor to spin an AC generator head. In this machine that means they are adding an additional 60%+ waste of system energy to the pumping process. Using the first pump to directly pressurize the reverse osmosis system sounds like a vastly better approach.
If they lack the engineering to build the linear pump to accommodate the pressure the osmosis system needs then they should recruit/hire someone who can rather than overly complicate the system.
So I'm curious if there is a valid reason for adding an inefficient hydraulic motor to the process.

Lol! This "new" technique has been worked on at least as far back as the 1970s
http://oceanenergysys.com/index.cfm?ref=70100

Wars will be fought for fresh water in the future. Any forward motion on this class of project is welcome.
Besides, if the hype is to be believed around ice cap meting resulting in water becoming less salty,. and so on, ... then perhaps mass acceptance of this form of water filtration may actually play a part in reversing the trend.
Either way, to claim that this technology can not provide sufficient power is very narrow minded. The moon will continue to spin around the earth, so we will always have energy from moving water mass available. While any one system may show obvious power fluctuations, the output of hundreds combined would mostly remove this white noise.

I applaud you all for your imagination, plus your dedication to manifest your idea.
I wish you every success, and whatever happens, please don't give up!
This sort of work is far too important in a world where water shortage is going to be a major driver to unrest, wars, and suffering.
Your idea of small, locally usable water desalinators is brilliant!

Which would cost more the repairs to keep if running or running a diesel for the same power and desalinated water?