Vancouver, British Columbia company Finavera Renewables, Incorporated has secured a deal from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in Northern California to place its AquaBuoys in the coastal waters in Humboldt County north of San Francisco. The AquaBuoys will generate electricity using wave power for 1,500 homes.
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.
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