Wave Power

​An American startup is looking to turn seawater into drinking water using only the motion of the ocean.

Although wave energy-harvesting systems are often just presented as concepts, one was recently deployed in Hawaii to provide power to the municipal grid. Built by Northwest Energy Innovations, the Azura device will remain in operation for a 12-month assessment period.

Dragan Tutić felt that using wave power to turn seawater into the drinkable variety on the spot had been largely unexplored. Having now developed a prototype, he hopes to deploy his wave-powered desalinator to where water scarcity threatens the survival of coastal communities.

Scotland's Albatern is putting a modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that convert wave energy into electricity, as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. The bigger the grid, the more efficient it gets.

The seafloor carpet, a system inspired by the wave absorbing abilities of a muddy seabed being developed at the University of California, Berkeley, takes exploring wave power as a renewable energy source to some intriguing new depths.

Stanford University researchers are deploying a fleet of static buoys and Wave Glider robots to turn the waters off the coast of San Francisco into a huge WiFi network to track tagged fish and animals.

Eco Wave Power has revealed the construction and testing of a medium-scale version of its Wind Clapper and Power Wing wave energy generation system in the Black Sea.

Eco Wave Power has developed a new wave energy harvest and conversion system based around novel Wave Clapper and Power Wing float designs.

BioPower Systems' bioWAVE is a wave power technology, inspired by the swaying motions of kelp plants.

Scottish marine energy technology developer, AWS Ocean Energy, has started testing a 1/9th scale version its AWS-III wave energy device in Loch Ness.

The world’s largest working hydro-electric wave energy device has been officially launched in Scotland. Known as ‘Oyster’, the device is, at present, the world’s only hydro-electric wave energy device producing power.

A new milestone for marine energy was achieved recently when UK based Wave and Tidal Technologies company Aquamarine Power Ltd signed a 1,000 MW (1 GW) Development Agreement with the renewable energy development division of Scottish and Southern Energy, Airtricity.