Wave Power Hits Oregon

In theory just 0.2 percent of the ocean’s energy could power the entire planet.

GU: This is the first utility-based wave power project in the country. What prompted you to move in this direction before anybody else did?

KW: We’re always looking for resources that integrate well with our power pool. If you look at our map, we have a pretty strong coastal presence, so the idea of nearby renewable resources is always an advantage, always a positive. We saw the integration issues as relatively easier than large facilities east of the region.

If you look at the Pacific Northwest, there are transmission constraints north to south, and east to west. A lot of power from Canada flows southward, and most of the hydro projects and thermal plants in the region are east of the Cascades. But most of the electrical loads, large urban areas like Seattle and Portland, are west of the Cascades. That’s where most of load growth is, too. So the transmission system is pretty full going north to south and east to west. Any time we can site smaller dispersed generation closer to our load centers, that’s a real plus. And waves appear to be a lot more reliable than wind.

The winds out here are just notoriously unpredictable. They’re either on or off, and very difficult to forecast. Ocean swells seem to be easier to forecast. We still have a lot of data to gather—NOAA buoy data from up and down the coast, and maybe even some overseas buoys. Then we can do some analysis and possibly—knock on wood—we could look ahead maybe 72, 96, even 168 hours and predict with fairly good accuracy what the wave generation would be. That kind of predictability is the Holy Grail of renewables.

GU: So is that the kind of data you’ll be getting from this first buoy?

KW: Well, we have some very crude information already. We’ve got some estimates of the energy availability off the Oregon coast, in gross monthly numbers. It comes as no surprise to us that the generation in the winter months will be greater than the summer months because there’s more wave action over the winter months. But that’s generation over a month or so, averaged out. We really need hourly data moving forward.

We also simply have a lot to learn about these devices: how well they operate; how much they cost to maintain. Do they break down? Do they function well in high seas conditions? What is normal maintenance? How many forced outages can we expect? We’re looking to gather data on all these things. My board asks me these questions, and we simply don’t have any answers yet.

GU: Being the first utility to go through the regulatory and permitting process for this must be a challenge. Have you had any hurdles to clear there?

KW: Well, OTP is the developer, the actual owner of the facility, so they have gone through that process. But yes, it has been very contentious. There’s a real environmental ethic here in Oregon, as there should be. We have a beautiful state. And there’s been a lot of negotiation and coordination with crabbing interests and fishing industries and surfers and people interested in whale migration up and down the coast. There is also the visual aspect, and the Coast Guard’s concerns. It’s been difficult, but OTP has stuck with it and now we’ve got a Corps of Engineers permit to place the first buoy. We need a FERC permit to actually place the other nine and electrically integrate, but we’re in the final stages of that. It’s been a long process, and it’s never been done before, so we’re blazing new territory.

GU: These buoys will be two and a half miles offshore. Will they be visible from the beach?

KW: They will be. The buoys themselves are about 145 feet tall, and about 30 feet of that will be out of the water. We also get a lot of questions about undersea cables. We don’t have much undersea cabling here on the West Coast, but on the East Coast it’s all over the place—hundreds of miles of undersea cables. So part of the process is just educating people, letting them know there won’t be dead zones.

GU: How does wave power stack up against other renewables in your portfolio, or that you are considering?

KW: We have a landfill gas project that we think is really good. Other biomass resources in the Northwest, like using wood biomass in more conventional fashion, as a fuel for a steam turbine, are attractive as well. There are some excellent geothermal resources here in the Northwest, which have very good operating characteristics. They’re more consistent than many renewable energy sources.

This is probably my own bias, but I’m not that keen on wind, because of its intermittency. It’s very difficult to integrate. In fact, I was just on a conference call with the Bonneville Power Administration, the big power marketing agency here in the Northwest. They own 80 percent of the transmission in the Northwest, and there are several thousand megawatts of wind on their system. Well, the concern is that in these upcoming months, we’ll actually have an over-generation problem, if you can believe that. We’d have high wind and high water.

You have to understand the Northwest: We get a lot of snowpack over the winter, and then it starts to melt these next couple months. If it melts too fast, we have a rush of water down the river. Coupled with the proper atmospherics, we get a lot of wind generation. So we’re talking with BPA about possibly displacing some of our thermal plants. Wind is problematic.

GU: So winter-peaking waves would be a better complement in your geography. Does that mean Bonneville is excited about the wave power project?

KW: Well, they’re kind of losing patience because it’s taking so long. But we’re still 100 percent behind it. We all intuitively see the advantages of wave over wind power. Because of the predictability, it’s more readily integrated. Again, we’ve got pretty good coastal presence of our members, so this could be integrated directly into their systems.

Also, we have a long tradition here of leaving no stone unturned when looking at new generation technologies. About 12 years ago the BonnevillePower Administration conducted a fuel-cell demonstration program all around the Northwest. There were 10 utilities that participated. We were one of them, and we had more than twice as many hours as anybody else on the fuel cell because we really want to explore that application. We were the first company in the Northwest to install a microturbine and work with that. This is just part of what we do. Our board is constantly asking us, “Have you investigated this? Do we understand that? Could this possibly fit in?” I’m always getting calls.