At the port, the blue floats that coil transform the power of the waves into clean energy
Los Angeles – During a recent sunny morning in a channel in the port of Los Angeles, seven blue steel structures that resemble small boats are lowered in the ocean one by one. Attached to an unused platform on a site that once housed oil tanks, they are slowly bin from top to bottom with the waves to generate renewable power. Nearby, a sea lion comes out of water and pelicans and gulls soar.
This is the country’s first energy site in the country, and Tuesday, Eco Wave Power will officially unveil the installation of the pilot and will start to work. The pilot will only generate a small amount of electricity that can be used locally, but the more important objective is to prove that technology works well enough to develop along 8 miles of breeze at the port – enough to supply up to 60,000 houses.
The co-founder and CEO Inna Braverman said that a lot of power could change the situation in terms of clean energy production “for the port and the communities that surround it. American shipping ports have long fought with dirty air that harms the health of people living nearby.
“We are starting here in Los Angeles, but we hope, suck and believe that we will be in the United States and other places in the world,” she said, standing outside a blue shipping container serving as a power plant power plant.
Wave Energy is an emerging industry that is largely focused on research, demonstration and pilot projects. But the potential is great.
The waves off the United States coast generate enough power to meet around a third of American energy needs, according to estimates by the Ministry of Energy. Even if only a portion is used, wave energy technologies could help meet the growing demand for electricity largely by the breed of artificial intelligence. The energy of the waves could also complete the wind and solar energy to stabilize the electrical network.
Eco Wave Power has installed its technology at the Altasea Ocean Institute of the Port, a non -profit organization that works in part to advance ocean solutions to climate change. Half of this pilot project was financed by the SHELL oil and gas company.
“This is the first American project on Breakwater, which opens up the possibility of doing so on several other ports in the United States,” said Remi Gruet, CEO of the Commercial Association Ocean Energy Europe. “It’s a time when Wave Power is starting to spend innovation projects to real pilot projects that go to industrialization and marketing.”
A key advantage for the energy of the waves is that it produces electricity at different times in wind and solar energy, said Gruet. For example, when the wind stops blowing, wind turbines stop producing electricity. But the waves will continue for hours and electricity can still be generated in this way, he said.
But the cost must drop with the help of subsidies, as for solar energy and wind, added Gruet.
The first commercial power plant in Europe began to operate in 2011 from a breakwater in Mutriku Harbor in Spain. An offshore wave energy system appeared online off the coast of Hawaii in 2016.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2023 to promote the development of the energy of waves in the state. Eco Wave Power currently has a two -year license to operate the pilot station at the Port of Los Angeles.
While the small blue float rises and descends, each pushes a cylinder which sends a biodegradable hydraulic liquid through a system of pipes in storage tanks. The pressure in the tanks accumulates. This pressure transforms an engine, which runs a generator, producing clean electricity.
“The world has waves, 70% of the world is covered by the ocean,” said Terry Tamminen, president and chief executive officer of Altasea and former secretary of California Environmental Protection Agency, on the project site.
“And we can exploit all this clean energy now, thanks to things like Eco Wave,” he said.
Braverman said there are dozens of sites along the American coast, identified by a study paid by Shell, where his business could use energy to add electricity specific to the network. It said that technology is easy to adopt because, unlike other renewable energies, this system does not require any land acquisition, it involves reuse existing structures rather than modifying the ribs and can produce electricity 24 hours a day.
The Eco Wave driver required licenses of the body of army and port engineers, but it was relatively rapid for two years, said Braverman.
Eco Wave Power also works on projects abroad, notably Taiwan, India and Portugal, and operates a project connected to the network in Israel. In New Jersey, where legislation progresses to promote the development of ocean energy in the state, the company is looking for a site to install a pilot project, with the help of elected officials.
Andrea Copping, an expert in the development of marine renewable energies, thinks that Eco Wave Power technology can be successfully increased. These small marine energy projects are not yet economically competitive with solar or wind energy, but there are places where they can be better suited or a solution in cooperation with other energy sources, such as distant coastal communities and islands where diesel deliveries can be very expensive, she said.
“We consider each successful deployment as an important step in the creation of this industry,” said Copping, an eminent member of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs teachers from Washington University.
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McDermott reported in Providence, RI
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