Looking out on the waves along the B.C. coast can be a soothing experience. For Charles Haynes of Mermaid Power Corp., it was a source of inspiration.
Haynes lowered his latest creation — a wave energy converter named the Neptune 3 — into the waters near the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge on Wednesday.
“I’ve developed a method….which moves the reciprocating motion — the up-and-down motion from the waves — and it converts that into one-wave rotational motion,” he said.
Haynes decided to dedicate himself to wave energy after staring out at the water with his wife. He now wants to be a leader in harnessing a form of renewable energy that comes with its own set of challenges.
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“So you’ve got essentially, we’ll call it a free source of energy,” Prof. Jon Mikkelsen of the UBC marine engineering program said. “The only challenge, of course, is how you’re able to extract that.”
The Neptune 3 hopes to help solve that question. It’s one of several experimental prototypes in the world, many of which use different methods to capture the power of the ocean.
Mikkelsen compares today’s wave power technology to the state of wind power technology 30 years ago.
Such technology could help small coastal communities that are off the grid and rely on dirty fuels.
“If we can replace those diesel generators with a tidal device, a wave device, then obviously we reduce all those greenhouse gases,” Mikkelsen said.
– With files from Linda Aylesworth