This Huge OE Buoy Can Generate Electricity For A Whole Village From Ocean Waves

We have had great advancements in turning the sunlight and the wind into renewable energy sources to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels and save the environment. However, there is another option that has not yet been tap into, which is the ocean.

As stated by the U.S Energy Information Administration, the waves off the coast of the country alone can produce as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours, which can be translated into around 64% of the U.S’s total electricity production last year. And that is only a small part of the waves we can use around the globe. The agency has found potential sites on the West Coast of the U.S, Japan, and Europe that we can set up the facility to harvest the massive energy of the ocean.

The reason why we have not yet exploited this source of energy in the way we harness wind and solar power is that the oceans are harsh environments for equipment to survive, let alone operate.

The saltwater and the turbulence of the seas will break just about anything, so it is challenging to build the kind of equipment that can work in these conditions for more than a few years.

Recently, a solution has emerged, and the company behind it is Ocean Energy. In the last ten years, it has perfected a generator durable enough to survive what the seas throw at it, all while harvesting a large amount of energy from them. The device is called OE Buoy and it weighs around 826 tons. It can generate enough power from wave power to sustain a whole small town without any additional power source.

Here is what Ocean Power said about the way the OE Buoy works. The underlying idea of the monstrous device is the oscillating water column. Overall, the buoy looks like the letter L with an open chamber submerged underwater. There is a turbine above the water surface. When water goes into the underwater chamber, it pushes air upward, which turns the turbine to generate electricity.

That is just one of the ways the buoy can make electricity. When waves crash into the device, it turns the turbine but when they bounce back, the buoy can harvest energy too, courtesy of the Wells turbine. According to Ocean Energy, when the water recedes, they create a vacuum in the chamber and suck air in, keeping the turbine spinning. The process repeats like that.

The best part is, except for the turbine, the OE Buoy has no other part that can move, so it has just a few chances of failure. Ocean Energy said that the biggest advantage of the rig is its simplicity in design. With only one moving part, the buoy has more opportunities to survive for long in the harsh environment of the seas.

As we speak, the OE Buoy is being transported to Hawaii where it will spend the next year undergoing various tests. The company said that it will be tested at WETS (short for US Navy Wave Energy Test Site) there. What the company plans is to create five units of the OE Buoy and deploy them at the Oregon Wave Energy Test Site.