Australia Pilots Novel Wave Energy Converter

Harnessing the power of our oceans could provide all the energy that the world needs three times over, with zero carbon emissions. Ocean waves produce an estimated 50 trillion to 80 trillion watts of power on a global scale. Even if we are able to harness just a fraction of that clean baseload power, it would upend global energy systems as we know them.

The issue is finding an efficient and cost-effective way to harness that energy and bring it to a commercially viable scale. “Many devices have been designed to capture and convert waves’ great power into electricity, but today’s technologies face challenges in efficiency, particularly in deeper waters,” The Conversation recently reported. “As a result, wave energy hasn’t yet taken off as a renewable source in the same way as wind and solar.”

But scientists haven’t given up on finding a technological solution to this puzzle, and we’re getting closer all the time. A new study from scientists at Cambridge University investigates how different kinds of waves can be harnessed to create more powerful forms of power production through ‘enhanced waves’. The study, published earlier this month in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, shows that deep underwater waves can interact with surface waves to create more energy and increase surface wave height by more than 30%, opening a door for more finely tuned and efficient ways to capture wave energy. This represents a key breakthrough in how we understand waves and their energy, as “the interaction between acoustic and surface gravity waves is generally neglected in classical water-wave theory due to their distinct propagation speeds.”

“Enhanced waves would enable today’s wave turbines and oscillating water columns (which use wave power to force air through a turbine) to produce more electricity, effectively overcoming their efficiency problem,” one of the paper’s authors wrote for The Conversation…