A Washington state company has asked federal regulators for a permit to study the potential of producing electricity from ocean waves off the California, Hawaii and Atlantic coasts.
Greys Harbor Ocean Energy applied for the permit last October from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a first step in what would be a multi-year process.
The company asked for permits in seven locations on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, he said. Those sites include areas off San Francisco and Ventura County in California, as well as sites off Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.
According to company officials, if all seven sites were developed, they could produce up to 7,700 megawatts of power, enough for 2 million homes.
Building the facilities would cost from $20 billion to $30 billion, the company estimates.
The company, formed last year, is not currently producing any power but is building a demonstration project off of Tacoma, Wash.
Although the permit simply gives the company the right to study the area, if it is approved the company would also get priority for use of the wave and wind "field" in that location, according to officials with the federal agency.
Modeled after a wave energy facility being built off the United Kingdom coast, the Ventura Ocean Energy Project, which would be located about five to 10 miles off the Ventura County (Calif.) coast, would also include a wind power component, according to the company's president, Burton Hamner.
Hamner said the Ventura County site, for example, could produce up to 1,000 megawatts of power, although the permit indicates it would produce about 100 megawatts during peak winter storm periods and average about 40.
What is being considered by the company is an offshore platform fixed to the ocean floor that holds an "oscillating water column." The up and down action of the waves pushes air back and forth and drives a turbine that generates electricity.
Wind turbines would augment power production. The electricity produced would be conveyed via cables on the sea floor that would come ashore near Ventura, Hamner said.
There are areas in California -- off Channel Islands as well as just north of Point Conception -- that produce much larger waves and more wind, according to the Community Environmental Council in Santa Barbara. But the area identified by Hamner off Ventura is ideal because of the depth and its proximity to a city power grid.
The cost of building such facilities isn't cheap but is competitive with construction costs of nuclear power plants or clean coal power plants, Hamner said.
"Using the numbers from construction in the U.K. as a rule of thumb, their costs are about $5 million per megawatt installed," he said. "That's everything, soup to nuts."
Using his formula, the Ventura project would cost about $500 million.
(Scott Hadly is a reporter for the Ventura County Star in California.)
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