I came across this article the other day - and found it to be another frustrating example of our government being slow to support British technology that could improve our environment. Producing clean energy is human kinds next great puzzle - which needs to be solved quickly.

Now waves, as we surfers know, keep on coming - there is no end to them. Some of the waves I've wiped out on I reckon had enough energy in them to light my house for a week.

A Scottish company Ocean Power Delivery Ltd have been working on a unique power generator that uses wave energy - called the Pelamis.

The Pelamis is a sausage shaped generator called "a semi-submerged, articulated structure composed of cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints. The wave-induced motion of these joints is resisted by hydraulic rams, which pump high-pressure oil through hydraulic motors via smoothing accumulators. The hydraulic motors drive electrical generators to produce electricity."

The power from all the joints is then fed down a single umbilical cable to a junction on the sea bed. Several devices can be connected together and linked to shore through a single seabed cable.

It looks like a really good technology that has been thoroughly tested for 6 years, it is unobtrusive as these 'wave generator farms' are miles offshore capturing the power from open ocean swells. These genuinely have zero environmental impact once in place.

Back to our lazy ass Government - it looks like the Department of Trade and Industry are not prepared to support this British technology, helping it to the next stage of industrial development (there are many more examples of this neglect e.g. the 'Leslie Pump'). Instead the Portuguese Government is...

The article that sparked this was in The Times 'Tidal power: sea change required' written by Magnus Linklater.

This is the opening paragraph check it out and wonder why out Government isn't supporting this?

Early next month a sea snake will be loaded on to a large container ship in the Western Isles of Scotland and will set out in its long way south to the coast of Portugal. Not just any sea snake. A mechanical sea snake, with the Latin name Pelamis, built in Scotland, tested in the North Sea and now about to join the long and depressing list of great British inventions that will be developed abroad. Pelamis generates electricity from wave power. It is a series of large articulated tubes, which move up and down with the swell of the sea, driving a turbine to produce power. For the past year it has been at work off the coast of Orkney, successfully feeding electricity into the grid through a substation near the town of Stromness.

Producing energy from the sea is the alchemy of the 21st Century. The company that can come up with a reliable, cost-effective system of harnessing tide or wave power will have a head start on what may turn out to be the most effective and least obtrusive form of alternative energy yet conceived, creating a multimillion-pound industry. Last month the Carbon Trust, the government-funded independent company that looks at ways of reducing carbon emissions, issued a report stating that marine energy could provide a fifth of Britain's energy needs. You might imagine then, that the Government would be throwing its weight behind any development that offered the chance of filling the energy gap at this time of climate crisis.

The rest of the article.

Another article with some good pictures.