- This device is designed
to convert waves into energy.
And we're not just talking
about enough energy to power a boogie board.
Waves like this could generate enough electricity
to power every U.S. household twice over.
- It's vast.
The amount of energy stored in the waves is huge.
It's enormous.
- The wave energy conversion is—
'Hey, there's all this free power out there,
how can we tap into it?'
- And we do need to tap into it.
The global demand for energy
will nearly double in the next 30 years,
and the only way to meet that demand
is to diversify our energy sources.
- The key to resiliency is diversity:
the more diverse amount of energy inputs,
the more resilient the grid is gonna be.
- The bad news is that it's very difficult
to capture that energy.
The ocean is a violent place,
and thus, very difficult to come up with equipment
that can survive in those conditions.
- But today, a record number of companies
and universities are setting their sights
on making a wave energy device
that is cost-effective, efficient,
and can take a battering from the ocean.
- What we're seeing now is that there's just enough
of a drive for all forms of renewable energy,
that even the ones that are kinda hard,
we need to go after.
So, that's what we're doing.
- Anybody looking at it,
the waves coming to shore,
and certainly swimming and surfing on them,
understand there's a lot of energy in there.
The challenge is how to capture that wave energy
and turn it into a useful energy, such as electricity.
Hey, thanks for the ride, Jason.
I really appreciate this.
- Not a problem. Here to help.
- My name is Nate Sinclair.
I work for the U.S. Navy.
I've done lots of project work over the years for the Navy,
and currently I'm leading the project
for developing wave energy technologies.
We're located just offshore of the Marine Corps base—
so it's a great location,
not only for the wave energy,
but it's a controlled environment.
- Sinclair is in O’ahu,
visiting Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
Here, at a facility called WETS,
the Navy operates a kind of clearinghouse
for anybody working on harnessing waves for energy.
Wave energy converters from all over the world
come to WETS to test and gauge
whether their designs can turn into viable products.
- All right, does that mean I get to clack it?
WETS is an acronym: stands for the Wave Energy Test Site.
We, the Navy, are operating and maintaining a test site
for others to come in
and learn more, demonstrate more
about their technology
to accelerate getting to a commercial result.
- Developing wave energy
might not sound like your typical military operation,
but the U.S. Navy is eager for ways
to more effectively fuel its forces in the Pacific Ocean.
If this tech is proven here,
it could one day be a model
for what wave energy could do everywhere else.
- Wave energy is a resource
that someday could provide power to grids.
The key is to develop technologies
that policymakers or populations can agree
that this is the best mix of technologies to fit
our particular needs.
- WETS is the first grid-connected site
in the U.S.—
one of very few in the world.
And the energy generated out on the water is measured
through this very mysterious, cliffside World War II bunker.
- This room is connected to the cable
at the 30-meter berth,
and so that wave energy device,
you know, sends its power to shore—
and then it gets cleaned up here
and put into the base grid.
We have a lot of access into the data from these tests,
and are kind of the 'honest brokers'—
how well they're operating.
For wave energy developers, it's a really tough road.
- Unlike with windmills or solar panels,
so far, there isn't just one superior kind
of wave energy device that's been successful.
The ocean is unpredictable and violent,
and capturing that energy efficiently is no easy task.
- The reason we're interested in it, the ocean,
is because it's energetic—
but that also presents challenges.
There's almost as many types of wave energy converters
as there are engineers.
- Pat Cross is a researcher
from the University of Hawaii,
working alongside the Navy at WETS,
and he's seen a wave energy device
of every size and shape come through the test site.
- It's early days,
and everyone is trying out wildly different ideas.
With wave energy, there's what we call a 'power matrix,'
which depends on both wave height and wave period.
In a regime where you have long-period wave swells,
one wave energy converter might be well-suited to that.
In a regime where you've got a lot of shorter-period waves,
you might be thinking of a different approach.
- Bringing a wave energy device to WETS
is the ultimate test,
and devices don't just go straight
from ideation to the open ocean.
Before they get there,
devices and their creators first travel
to a place like this.
- This is the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab,
and it is used by researchers all over the country,
including us.
Pretty much all wave energy converters
start in people's heads.
But then, a typical path is to take that concept
and prototype that concept,
actually build it scaled-down,
and test it in a facility like this.
And the wave regime that you can hit it with
is similarly scaled-down.
- Here, Cross and his team have complete control
over the scale and intensity of generated waves.
They've come here to test a new design of their own.
- So how many more runs at this wave height?
- Four runs at 30 centimeters.
- Okay.
There's a few prominent types
of wave energy converters.
We're testing a flap-type wave energy converter,
which is essentially a flap deployed in the nearshore,
taking advantage of the fairly constant direction
of the waves close to a beach.
I'm happy because we're getting
extremely valuable data.
The flap is behaving roughly as we expect,
although we're seeing a little bit more motion
in response to the waves than we expected.
We're really trying to see that,
"Ah, the behavior was a little bit different
in this period of wave."
So that's what this project is all about,
is to conclude with a prediction
of how a full-scale version of the device would perform.
My hope for the future is that we have meaningful
contribution to coastal power grids.
The initial use cases would be the areas
where electricity is more expensive:
remote communities where
diesel fuel needs to be shipped
or flown in.
- The Navy has uses, whether it's bringing power to shore
for more resilient, base utility power,
or offshore persistent
surveillance or communications,
charging of autonomous underwater vehicles.
- One application that we're exploring with the Navy
is using a wave energy converter
as an Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV)
docking and charging station.
Imagine an autonomous vehicle
that can swim around and collect ocean data,
and then come back in to receive a recharge
to its batteries.
You have the potential to just vastly expand your ability
to observe the oceans if you have power at sea.
- For a long, long time,
we've known lots and lots about outer space,
but we've invested very little
in understanding our oceans.
Having a wave energy conversion capability
for generating power out in remote parts of the ocean
may be very timely,
now that the oceans are getting more attention.
- There's so much need for clean energy in the world.
It's the motivator.
It's what keeps us moving forward.