Wave Farm Destined For Scottish Waters

I’ve talked before about wave power being the wave of the future. This past January, I even talked about the Finavera AquaBuOYs bobbing up and down off the shores of Northern California. But, now Scotland has thrown their hat in the watery ring of wave power.

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.