The web's first ocean and offshore wind energy weblog. Continuously renewed, like the ocean itself.
The OREG Symposium 2005 will be a forum of provocative presentations and over four hours of facilitated discussion. Participants will help to draft a sector business plan in an effort to coordinate technology, business, regulatory and policy development to ensure that Canada catches the European lead.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), granted Verdant Power, LLC's request to clarify that they do not require a license to deploy, on a short term (18 months), experimental basis, six 36 kW tidal power turbine units that will temporarily supply power to two customers on New York City's Roosevelt Island, at no cost. Verdant had argued that it needed to install projects and connect them to actual customers to study and evaluate how they would operate in real world conditions. Verdant will use the results of its second 18- month study to enable them to complete its application for a FERC license...
As the Verdant case demonstrated, FERC's strict license requirement created a "catch-22" for developers of emerging kinetic hydropower technologies, who often need to install their projects to study and evaluate their efficiency and impacts, in order to complete a license application. By allowing tidal and wave developers to move forward with experimental projects, without obtaining a full license, FERC's order will facilitate collection of data that can help FERC make a reasoned decision on whether or not to grant licenses.
In a separate concurrence, Commissioner Kelly recognized that the Federal Power Act's licensing requirements were never intended to apply to experimental projects. Kelly explained:
"Verdant Power's project is experimental and the facilities are to be utilized for a short period of time for conducting studies necessary to prepare a license application. Second, the very nature of Verdant's project is one that requires a 'jump start' from the grid, in order to be tested...the potential for displacement of grid power is a necessary consequence for demonstration."
The chief executive and founder of Ocean Power Delivery is at the forefront of the marine-renewables sector in the UK and, by extension, the world. He has a £6m contract under his belt to supply wave energy-generating machines to a wave farm in Portugal and is negotiating to establish Scotland’s first commercial wave farm. But he has a well honed sense of how fragile the nascent marine device industry is.
As a former engineer in the wind turbine industry, he knows Scotland and the UK could easily find itself starting out as a market and technology leader but end up playing economically devastating catch-up.
Yemm built Ocean Power Delivery on fees earned by his invention of a device to stop wind turbines from suffering a particular kind of vibration damage, but he was drawn to wave power. “People were saying, ‘After you’ve had a few beers you’re always talking about how much better wave power would be than wind in the long run, so put your money where your mouth is and go and do it,’” recalls Yemm. In 1998 he did, founding OPD.
“It’s all very well making a brilliant machine that can turn waves into energy but if you can’t turn it into a business it’s got no future.”
He lists as his proudest achievements not the day he built the vibration-dampening device which funded all subsequent ventures, nor the day an OPD prototype hit the water, but the first time he raised venture capital funding and the company’s first actual sale.
“The biggest single achievement has to be selling something. Securing our first sales contract really has been the pinnacle,” he says.
It is exactly this that sets OPD apart. There are a handful of very different wave generators in development across the UK but it is the £6m contract with Portuguese developer Enersis and the venture capital funding raised that mark OPD out as the most advanced contender.
You Yage, chief scientist for the Ocean Energy Division at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, led his team to introduce vibrating technologies into a newly-invented electricity generator, the Economic Daily reported Thursday.
"The new kind of generator is more efficient, lower-cost and typhoon-resistant," You was quoted as saying by the newspaper on Thursday. He said that the six-kw generator worked well after more than 20 typhoons.
The testing equipment can be used for electricity for light, computers, air conditioners and sea water desalination, the scientist said.
You and his team early this year developed the world's first experimental wave power station at sea near Shanwei City, in south China's Guangdong Province.
British and Portuguese scientists have researched wave power stations, but they have failed to reach technical expectations.
"Although ubiquitous at sea," You said, "wave power is one of the most unstable forms we can find on the earth."
You's team devised an energy-storage manostat, a device that can effectively transfer wave power to energy resulting from hydraulic pressure.
I am an attorney in Washington DC with my own law practice, Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant. For more than a decade, I've been helping ocean energy, offshore wind and other marine renewables and hydro developers get projects funded, permitted and built. Of course, I handle all kinds of other matters - general litigation (civil and criminal), appellate, FERC regulatory practice (e.g., generation interconnection, market design and rates, transmission organizations and all that). What unifies my work in all these areas is my commitment to getting results for my clients no matter the impediments. To better serve my energy clients, I have affiliated as of counsel with the Law Offices of Scott Hempling , a prominent national energy practice.
