Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: Now it’s time to check in on the state of science.

[RADIO JINGLE]

Local science stories of national significance, and you know when you hear the term renewable energy, you might think of what? The usual suspects– solar, wind, hydropower, even geothermal. But there’s also one that has almost unlimited potential that we don’t hear much about, and that’s the power of ocean waves. Wave energy has an estimated efficiency of as much as 50%. But efforts to harvest it have been very slow in the US.

Now a proposed project off the coast of Oregon hopes to boost wave energy development. Here with the story is Jes Burns, producer and reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting Science and Environment Team. She joins us from Ashland. Welcome to Science Friday.

JES BURNS: Hey, thank you.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. So what exactly is this thing OSU is trying to build?

JES BURNS: Yeah, so Oregon State University wants to build a wave energy testing facility. This isn’t a building. This is a area of the ocean about 6, 7 miles offshore, 2.5 square miles, so a big chunk. And in that, they would have the ability for wave energy developers that are developing these devices to come in and test their buoys and their devices, all different kinds of configurations there.

And the kind of important thing here is that there are going to be undersea electric transmission lines that are going to connect back to shore. And so basically, these wave energy developers will be able to plug up to five each of these devices into a cable and then test how they interact together, how much electricity they’re producing, just how well they do out in the ocean environment.

IRA FLATOW: So they’re like giving them an underwater maker space to figure out how to do anything. Yeah.

JES BURNS: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

IRA FLATOW: That is cool. So you can hook up all the cables and do all kinds of underwater testing for wave energy. What kind of technologies are we talking about for harvesting wave energy? Is it like wind turbines, or how do you make electricity from motion waves?

JES BURNS: Well, you can make it through wind turbines out in the ocean. You can do tidal energy. This specific project is actually capturing the motion of the waves, using the kind of kinetic energy in the waves to generate electricity. Yeah, there’s all different kinds of concepts out there. This is a pretty early tech, so companies are just emerging with these.

A couple that I’ve seen– one is kind of the one you would think about, that it would be a buoy floating on top the water, anchored to the ocean floor. And then the up and down of the waves would be captured and then transmitted into electricity.

Another one I saw that I thought was really interesting was– I guess picture a large piece of spaghetti floating on top of the ocean. And it’s tethered on both ends. So it’s attached on both ends. And basically, as that noodle is floating, and the waves are moving it, it’s moving up and down, left and right. And basically, you would convert that motion into electricity. So just kind of noodles on top the ocean was another one I just thought was just an interesting concept.

IRA FLATOW: That does sound good. Well, why is Oregon a good place to test out this technology?

JES BURNS: We have a lot of waves. The wind blows. There’s big ocean storms. There’s a lot of wave energy potential. I actually spoke with the project manager for the OSU project, Justin Klure. He told me that the coast of Oregon is actually kind of the ultimate testing ground for this kind of energy technology.

JUSTIN KLURE: When you look at the environment off the coast of Oregon, it is one of the more harsher wave climates in the world. And if you can get past an Oregon winter with the technology and prove that you can not only survive, but also generate electricity, that would be the ultimate goal.

IRA FLATOW: People have objected to wind power offshore. What kind of opposition might you see with wave energy?

JES BURNS: Well, I anticipate, just based on other projects and marine areas off of the coast of Oregon, that the fishing industry is going to get involved in this. And Oregon has a thriving fishing industry– dungeness crab, salmon, pink shrimp. And so anything that impacts kind of where fishermen can go and where they can fish, they definitely kind of voice their concerns. OSU has said that they’re going to allow fishing, but I mean–

IRA FLATOW: Jes, I’ve run out of time.

JES BURNS: Yeah. OK.

IRA FLATOW: Well, we get the picture. Jes Burns, science and environment reporter at the Oregon Public Broadcast.

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