Wave Energy Although wave energy is less intensive than what is available in more northern and southern latitudes, it has a potential of around 40,000 MW along the 6,000 km coast of India. The R&D activity for exploring wave energy in India began at the Ocean Engineering Center, IIT – Madras, in 1982. Primary estimates [...]
Wave and Tidal Energy have been the poor cousins of Solar and Wind Power in the Alternative Energy Domain. I have written about the wave energy companies and advantages and disadvantages of tidal power in the past as well. But the investment opportunities in this area of clean energy have been limited because the technology is still in its infancy. Dr. Ashok has come out with a plan to build a 100 MW device using wave energy and needs funding to develop it. Below is a description of the Plan and the Funding required . Interested Investors can do their due diligence and contact the inventor directly.
Wave Energy is one of the niche Water Energy Technologies that is still in its infancy stage in terms of technology maturity.Wave Energy has been around a long time with around 350 patents being granted for this technology and around 200 startups working on this renewable energy form.Wave Energy basically derives power from the movement of waves to generate electricity or power.Wave Power exists due to the differences in the speed of ocean water and wind power.The energy is transferred by the Wind Energy to the Waves which can be utilized to generate power.A wide variety of wave energy generators like buoys,underwater devices are being developed to harness the power of the waves in a cost efficient manner.Wave Energy Research is concentrated mainly in the United Kingdom which has made tidal and wave power central to meeting its 2020 European goal for renewable energy.Edinburgh in UK has become a center of wave energy development and EMEC has developed Cornwall as an important site for demonstration of wave energy projects.Some of the wave power companies are listed on the stock market as well.Due to the technology immaturity ,most of these stocks are micro cap and not an investible class for big investors.
Wave Energy is being developed for a long time almost since the 1700s through a variety of devices and convertors.Wave Devices are being used mainly to generate electricity and for water desalination.Wave Energy has a myriad of systems being developed as the technology is still immature.Wave energy generation is still a research field and there are as many designs as companies active in this field.Note as a technology matures,a single technology system gain ascendance as others are discarded along Darwinian lines.For example solar technology which is in the phase before maturity has majority of its energy convertors of the mainstream polycrstalline solar panels.Wind Energy which is further along the learning curve has most of its energy being generated from large vertical axis wind turbines.Wave Energy on the other hand has not come around a single dominant type of device.A number of devices are being developed to harness wave energy efficienty and at low cost.Wave Energy faces problems of being exposed to strong weather elements therefore wave energy designs are progressing along the lines of devices which require low maintainance and which are able to withstand weather better through devices with lower number of moving parts.
Wave Energy is a niche renewable energy type which has been seeing slow development for the past many years.The immature nature of the technology means that most of the wave energy projects have been mostly been pilots.The same state of affairs exists in India as well with a few pilot projects being constructed.Though the government of Gujarat is constructing India’s biggest tidal barrage off the coast of the Arabian sea,wave energy projects have been few and far between.Indian Wave Energy traces its history since 1984 when a Oscillating Water Column (OWC) type of device put into tuse at Vizinjham Fisheries Harbor near Trivandrum in Kerala.In 1993 the National Institute of Ocean Technology was established