The most innovative addition to sea wave energy harvesting industry, is a planned project by Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation in Boston, MA.
The concept is to harness sea waves energy by a fleet of purposely build ships with specially designed pivotal extended arms connected to buoys which floats up & down as sea waves. This movement of pivotal arms attached to a generator which produce one megawatt of electrical power an hour.
These ships can be launched from a designated port to sea & can harvest up to 20 megawatts within 20 hour period and power will be stored in an on-board battery. Ships with fully charged batteries can be connected to the main power grid as they arrive to a sea port.
This solution is much favourable over existing fixed stations, not only they can negotiate high waves and severe storms but also for lower cost, low maintenance & mobility.
Currently these ships able to generate power for $0.15 per kWh which much lower than existing methods which costs between $0.30 and $0.65 per kWh. This technology much cheaper than solar power & can be comparable to offshore wind energy prices.
Source:Â www.fhcmi.org