Wave Power

Tetrapods are often used to protect coastlines from eroding away under the constant barrage of waves. Now a project from OIST has outlined plans for turbines that would sit alongside tetrapods, helping to not only dissipate wave energy, but harvest it.

Wind and solar power are proving themselves viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Ocean waves could pitch in too, and Australian company Wave Swell Energy is developing a new device to harvest that energy. New Atlas spoke to Dr. Tom Denniss, the CEO of the company, to find out about the technology.

​An American startup is looking to turn seawater into drinking water using only the motion of the ocean.

​Last month, Gizmag was on the ground in Gibraltar as EWP inaugurated the first ever grid-connected wave power station in Europe. With the Gibraltar station off to a good start, we sat down with EWP’s co-founders Inna Braverman and David Leb to discuss the present and future of the company.

Gizmag was in Gibraltar at the ribbon cutting event for EWP's innovative wave energy station, installed on the ammunition jetty in the tiny-yet-iconic British territory. The event itself was brief, but its significance could be huge.

While world leaders meet in Paris to discuss reducing carbon emissions believed to contribute to climate change, the government of Gibraltar is putting its own renewable energy plan into action.

Although wave energy-harvesting systems are often just presented as concepts, one was recently deployed in Hawaii to provide power to the municipal grid. Built by Northwest Energy Innovations, the Azura device will remain in operation for a 12-month assessment period.

Ordinarily, when a ship is heading into waves, those waves cause it to work harder. An experimental new setup known as a "whale tail," however, utilizes wave action to actually help ships move forward, allowing them to use less fuel when tackling rough seas.

Harnessing wave power can be a tricky business. It's one thing to build a device that simply moves up and down with the waves, but another to build one that's efficient enough to be cost-effective. Swedish company CorPower Ocean claims to have done just that, however.

An old fishing trawler has been given new life in Norway, where it's now anchored offshore in the Stadthavet area and serving as a wave power plant. It's part of a project which ultimately calls for larger, purpose-built vessels to convert wave motion into electricity.

Dragan Tutić felt that using wave power to turn seawater into the drinkable variety on the spot had been largely unexplored. Having now developed a prototype, he hopes to deploy his wave-powered desalinator to where water scarcity threatens the survival of coastal communities.

Scotland's Albatern is putting a modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that convert wave energy into electricity, as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. The bigger the grid, the more efficient it gets.