Well, now the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has stricken this deal saying that wave energy was still in its experimental stages. The PUC also says that PG&E would be paying too much for the electricity generated by wave power.

Unfortunately for PG&E, they were hoping that this wave farm would help towards achieving California’s mandate that 20-percent of the electricity produced within the state by 2010 with renewable energy.

On the upside of the wave farm news this week is that the most recent wave energy prototype engineered by Columbia Power Technologies and Oregon State University has proven successful. The direct drive buoy, tested in collaborated with the U. S. Navy off the cost of Newport, Oregon, exceeded expectations.

The way the buoys are constructed they eliminate the necessity of a hydraulic systems and are in fact more robust in rugged ocean situations. As with any new renewable energy technologies there will be plenty of ups and downs when it comes to wave energy.

But, the biggest upside is clean, green, renewable energy on a massive scale that vastly available.

One of the largest objections by environmentalists to wave farms has been the unsightly buoys bobbing up and down in the ocean (the same goes for offshore wind turbines as well). Triton is addressing this “not in my backyard” phenomenon of renewable rejection by placing the buoys underwater so that they are out of sight and out of mind.

The Triton wave farm would be anchored to the ocean floor in approximately 100 feet of water at a depth where they would not be a hazard to boats, ships or sea life. The CETO pumps on the buoys are made of plastic, rubber, concrete and steel and would resist deterioration.

The wave farm would consist of many buoys (and buoys will be buoys) bobbing up and down, churning pistons, which will in turn pump sea water ashore where the pressurized liquid will be converted to mechanical and then electrical energy.

In an island scare of many resources, where oil and food have to brought in by ship captains brave enough to forge through the Bermuda Triangle, renewable energy in the form of wave power makes sense. Wind and solar power were also considered by Triton but wave energy is more reliable, efficient and will provide more energy output for this tiny Atlantic tourist destination and financial center.

Ocean Power Technologies is slated to hand over a turnkey wave power station that Griffen will then connect into the grid. The wave power station will be capable of delivering 10 MW to start and will be expandable up to 100 MW in the future.

The wave power station is part of the Western Australian government’s desire to deliver 15-percent renewable energy by 2020. This ocean powered electrical station off the coast of Perth is the wave of the future in renewables and will serve as a model for other coastline cities to emulate.

In fact, Scotland is dead set on developing the world’s first wave farm in the turbulent waters off its rocky coastline. The Scottish are already world leaders in alternative and renewable energy as the PURE (Promoting Unst’s Renewable Energy) agency is setting up wind farms to create hydrogen on the Shetland island of Unst.

But, now off the Orkney Islands, the ScottishPower utility along with the help of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) and perhaps even General Electric will create the world’s first wave farm that could generate up to 1,300 megawatts or enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle.

According to CNN Money, the initial plans are to develop and install “…four giant metal sausages bobbing on the waves, each 460 feet long and capable of generating 750 kilowatts.” The development of this project in all likelihood will take several years until fruition, but wave power right now is one of the most underdeveloped sources for renewable energy far behind the leads of solar and wind energy at this point.

Now, if we can just convince Ken-ichi Horie, the owner of the world’s first wave powered boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, to take a trip from Japan to visit the wave farm in Scotland, this would be a very good symbolic gesture indeed.

PG&E, the first company in the U. S. to test the system, will be using the Finavera AquaBuoys to help it achieve 20-percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2010 as mandated by California law. The AquaBuoy power plants are scalable from hundreds of kilowatts to hundreds of megawatts.

The plan is to place eight AquaBuoys 2 ½ miles offshore, where the bobbing motion in the ocean will create electricity through two-stroke hose pumps. The electricity, then in turn travels upon an underwater transmission cable to a PG&E substation, where it will be forwarded to the homes.

Finavera says their AquaBuoys maintain a low profile so as not to be an eyesore to beachgoers, yet visible to boats and ships. The AquaBuoys are also durable and heavily moored so they will not degrade or drift when hammered with rough ocean conditions.

More recently, researchers have been exploring tidal energy, ocean waves and running streams as sources of renewable energy. The Rance estuary in northern France holds the world’s largest tidal power station that generates electricity at regular intervals when the tide comes in or out.

Offshore underwater turbines are also being developed that capitalize on extracting electrical energy from the ocean’s currents. These devices may be setup where the underwater currents are the strongest and generate electricity, which may be stored in batteries or electrolyzed into hydrogen for storage (and run through a fuel cell later) or piped directly onshore, depending upon the distance from the turbines to land.

Companies like Marine Turbines, Swanturbines and Verdant Power are developing these devices. These devices may also be used in large rivers, bays (such as San Francisco Bay) and lakes (such as the Great Lakes).

There is another kind of ocean power device that is also making waves based upon buoys that bob up and down in the ocean and are tethered to underwater generators below. The generators then transmit electricity ashore through a power cable. The PowerBuoy wave generation system from Ocean Power Technologies is one example of this type of renewable energy delivery method.

There is another type of water power in development that harnesses the energy in small streams and rivers to generate electricity. Many large and small developing nations around the world are already using Micro Hydro to create electricity for homes and communities. Pakistan’s Sarfraz Ahmad Khan has come up with a novel approach for hydro electric power generation.

Of course, there is always geothermal energy, which combines heat and water (steam) to create renewable energy. Just north of San Francisco, near Santa Rosa is the Geysers, which is the largest geothermal field in the nation.

No matter what flavor you choose, water power is here to stay. In fact, many believe that water power offers at least as much hope if not more for a renewable energy future than both solar and wind energy.