I’ve often wondered about the wisdom of trying to co-locate offshore wind turbines with wave-energy technology as a way of saving on transmission-line costs and creating a capacity factor that’s much higher than the two technologies on their own. Back in July I e-mailed Francis Farley, inventor of the Anaconda wave power converter — basically a snake-like machine that captures the kinetic energy in the waves as its various segments bob up and down. I asked Farley what he thought about the idea of pairing his system with offshore wind. “You have a good point,” he said. “There would be some economies in combining offshore wind with wave energy, and some sites would have both.”

I dropped the idea, thinking it might be good fodder for a column at a later date. Then I noticed this week that Eric Stoutenburg, a researcher at Stanford University, came to a similar conclusion in a research paper that he presented this week at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco. “If wave energy wants to get off the ground, it might have better potential to develop in the shadow of an offshore wind plant,” Stoutenburg told Cleantech Group.

Developers pay for offshore projects based on the area covered. Dual energy-generating methods would give power energy per square kilometer, improving the project cost, Stoutenburg said. Additionally, the two power sources could share transmission cables, which are an expensive element. The plant operators would see savings in operations and maintenance, which can be costly for offshore projects that have limited accessibility, he said. However, even more notable than cost savings is the value of the energy generated, he said. Stoutenburg said he was surprised to learn that wind and wave power are not strongly correlated, which means that they don’t generate power at the same time, with the exception of during storms. That means a wind-wave energy project could deliver a consistent power supply, which is more valuable to utilities because it doesn’t stress the electricity grid as much as sudden surges of energy generation, Stoutenburg said.

Meanwhile, another report from Stanford University ranks the best combination of renewable energy and vehicle technology based on how it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy security, and cut down on air pollution. Prof. Mark Jacobson, in the university’s department of civil and environmental engineering, concluded after a thorough analysis that the best combination is to use wind power and battery-electric vehicles, though concentrated solar, geothermal, tidal, solar PV and wave power also rank high (in that order). Nuclear and clean coal with carbon capture ranked lowest. According to Jacobson:

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

Joe Romm over at Climate Progress offers a more thoughtful review of Jacobson’s study if you want to learn more.

Tags: Anaconda, Eric Stoutenburg, Mark Jacobson, Stanford University

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 11:15 pm and is filed under electric vehicles, transportation, wave power, wind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.