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Lockheed, Ocean Power to Team Up
on Wave Power
Jan 26, 2009 - Josie Garthwaite - earth2tech
Lockheed Martin Corp. and Ocean Power Technologies
plan to develop a utility-scale wave power project
off the coast of California or Oregon, the two said
this morning.
Lockheed will construct the project and handle operations
once it’s up and running, and New Jersey-based Ocean
Power will provide the technology — so-called “PowerBuoy”
(pictured) generators that convert wave energy into
electricity, which can feed into a local power grid
via underwater transmission lines. The 12-year-old
company, one of the more established wave power developers
in a growing field, claims that its 10-megawatt buoys
can work in arrays of up to hundreds of megawatts.
Wave power technology, however, has yet to be tested
on that scale. Even single-digit megawatt projects
(”utility-scale” generally means generating capacity
of at least 1 megawatt) remain in the early stages
of development. As Finavera Renewables found out three
months ago when the California Public Utilities Commission
sunk a 2-megawatt project planned for the Pacific
coast, it’s a long haul between an agreement like
the Lockheed-Ocean Power one unveiled today and actual
deployment.
California utility PG&E agreed to buy energy from
the Finavera array back in 2007. It was slated to
become the country’s first commercial wave power project
— until state commissioners decided the technology
was too new and the prices too high for a viable project.
Approval for the energy procurement contract: denied.
To be sure, wave power has bulked up its utility-scale
track record recently, and the Lockheed-Ocean Power
project may fare better with regulators. The companies
have already worked together on maritime surveillance
projects for the U.S. government. And last fall, Spanish
utility Iberdrola deployed a PowerBuoy off the coast
of Spain in the first phase of what Ocean Power said
would be the first commercial utility-scale wave power
generation venture. (A 10-buoy, 1.39-megawatt array
is planned for the site.) If Lockheed and Ocean Power
can bring down the cost of a power-purchasing agreement,
the West Coast may be home to the second.
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