With short and long term energy concerns mounting, California Connected looks at promising renewable energy sources right in our backyard: the Pacific Ocean, that is.
Independent Natural Resources, a Minnesota company, has proposed a pilot program off the coast of the Table Bluff area of Humboldt County that would convert the breaking waves into bankable electricity.
Its CEO, Mark A. Thomas, says that the region has just the right amount of consistent wave energy, and that a triumph in environmentally-minded California would translate into a national success.
UpdateNovember 20, 2006
Mark Thomas, the founder of Independent Natural Resources, says in the past year-plus since this story first aired, they have tweaked the SEADOG design a few times and are aiming at getting state permits to get a prototype in the water at the end of 2006.
- Independent Natural Resources and its Seadog pump
- Links to ocean energy articles from the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
- California Energy Commission’s page on wave energy
- Wave Power Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Edinburgh; “The Wave Power Group dates back to 1974— the year that Stephen Salter invented the ‘duck’ as a means of converting into electricity some of the abundant natural power that arrives as ocean waves on our western shores.”