Where is the best place to situate wave or tidal power plants?
The U.S. Pacific Coast, the Chilean coast and Atlantic Europe are good locations, but so are Alaska, Hawaii and the equator. Tidal power is more site-specific, but could work in most of the same areas. A start-up, Verdant Power, this year inserted the first of six prototype turbines in New York’s East River. It’s a cost/benefit trade-off, but you’ll likely be able to see a lot of these facilities from shore. Waves begin to dissipate energy when the water gets less than 200 meters deep. At 20 meters in depth, a wave might have only one third of the energy it had in deep water, according to a 2006 report from Michael Robinson of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Putting wave harvesting systems farther offshore, however, means that you need a longer cable to connect the harvesting system to the power grid.
