Pacific Gas & Electric is seeking $6 million from the Public Utilities Commission to study wave energy off Fort Bragg as part of aggressive efforts by the company to boost its alternative energy portfolio.
Three representatives from the utility told a packed house at a Fort Bragg Town Hall last Thursday about the local proposal and the utility”s need for more alternative energy.
The speakers, ranging from commercial fishers to environmentalists at the event sponsored by the North Coast Fishing Association, were mostly negative or baffled by the not yet defined bureaucratic process for the emerging technology.
“This is an attempt to extract energy from our resource by a giant corporation … using risky, untried technology,” said Judith Vidaver, of Friends of the Ten Mile River.
PG&E is required to generate 20 percent of its power from qualified alternative sources such as wave energy, solar and wind power by 2010. But the company told investors it probably won”t reach its target, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the day of the Fort Bragg event.
Uday Mathur, project manager for the twin Fort Bragg and Eureka proposals, said wave power along the Northern California Coast shows real economic potential.
A big question asked by many in the crowd was “why here?”
The utility studied 10 sites from San Diego north and picked Fort Bragg and Eureka as the two best sites for generating and hooking up a wave energy plant on the 600 miles of California coastline.
Studies show that as much as 5,000 megawatts of wave power could be generated off the California coast. In 2005, power use in California peaked at 68,000 megawatts.
Exposure to northwest swells makes local wave energy greater than in Southern California. Analysis of 25 years of data from offshore buoys shows average wave heights from 6.5 to 10 feet. Even more important is the fact that deep water becomes shallow in a much shorter span locally, the steep incline helping to create the needed wave action.
PG&E surprised locals by filing a study claim in February to 68 square miles off Fort Bragg with a preliminary permit application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
PG&E”s applications would allow it to eventually build two 40-megawatt power plants off the remote Northern California Coast, beginning each with a 4 to 5 megawatt experimental device. PG&E”s “WaveConnect” plan would test multiple ocean-powered technologies from up to four manufacturers, with clusters of devices connected to one transmission cable.
At an Oct. 2 meeting in Portland, Ore., FERC was planning to get input on a proposal to shorten the process of getting the experimental device into the water from three years-plus to as little as six months. Mathur told this reporter that if a shortened process was available, PG&E would look at it, but not enough information is now available to comment on the proposed new process.
FERC has granted 22 permits for ocean study in four years and has another 16 pending, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. Most are off Washington and Oregon, with two competing plans off Humboldt County.
Critics worry that wave energy plants up and down the coast could impact currents and block fishers from prime spots. Spokesman Ian Caliendo said PG&E is not looking to choose between Eureka and Fort Bragg proposals, but it is too early in the process to know how any of it will ultimately shake out.
“As we go through, this process would be very open and public,” promised Mathur.
When asked by the newspaper, he couldn”t say whether feasibility studies now under way, under the Public Utilities Commission funding, would be released to the public and press.
“I will check into that,” he said.
The $6 million in Public Utilities Commission money is just for the study, not for any hardware or construction costs, the utility spokesmen said.
More than a year ago, Gregory Lamberg was sent by the utility to speak to the Fort Bragg City Council. He said PG&E has promised the California Coastal Commission not to proceed with devices that water flows through — because of potential entrapment of marine life. When asked by the newspaper last week, Mathur didn”t appear to know about that promise and said PG&E would use the community input process about such concerns to rule out certain technologies.
Mathur said the utility does not have any specific percentage of money to spend locally on the study or the process. That too can be determined during the stakeholder process.
Community input is at the heart of the entire process, precisely because it is so undefined.
Mary Jane Parks of Finavera, a company involved in virtually every wave energy proposal in the world, described the process for an Indian tribe in Washington which has been under way since 2001.
“FERC had no recommendations as to what we studied,” Parks said.
She said fishing groups, environmentalists and state agencies have raised the questions and found answers there.
“FERC just wanted to make sure consensus was being built,” she said.
“The discussion comes from the state and you, the recreational and commercial fishermen,” said Parks.
Mathur told the crowd that PG&E had a 58 percent carbon-free portfolio, with 24 percent nuclear power and 22 percent in large hydraulic projects. Large dams and nuclear plants don”t qualify for the 20 percent requirement, intended for green power sources.
PG&E currently gets 12 percent of its electricity from the green, renewable sources that would qualify under the state law.
Right now PG&E, like the rest of the world, is generating no wave energy power. Caliendo emphasized the technology is new and the PG&E effort is at the application stage (although that still serves as a claim precluding other applications)
Wave energy is the least developed of solar, wind and wave energy but may have more long-term potential.
Five years ago, wave energy was an idea that existed only in coffee shop debates. Now millions are being invested in machines still in drydock.
Wave energy proposals are in the works along west coasts all over the world, including Portugal, Spain, UK, Ireland, South Africa and Australia.
Even if a working generator can be found, engineering and equipment challenges still unresolved include corrosion and storm survivability, reliability and maintainability, along with not creating hazards to sea life, fishing and navigation. All the wave energy devices will be moored to the bottom in up to 600 feet of water and float like fishing boats surrounding a school of fish, Mathur said.
The only commercially ready device is the Pelamis, which is an attenuator device, getting its power from the up and down motion of the ocean. Installation of the world”s first commercial plant, using Pelamis devices, is under way off Portugal. Three other technologies are competing with the attenuator, the point absorber (buoy), oscillating water column (uses an air pressure chamber) and the overtopping, which Mathur described as a floating dam.
A wave energy plant has no emissions to contribute to global warming, can use just a few gallons of biodegradable hydraulic fluid in its operations and can be invisible from shore despite bright colors used to alert shipping, backers say.
A wave energy farm would also disrupt currents and waves. It would cause unknown impacts on whales and tidepool life and even surfers.m Waves hitting the shore would lose height, dissapointing surfers. Wave energy pilot projects produce power in the cost range of 20 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour.
Eventually, the industry hopes prices will drop to 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour, competitive with onshore wind power (and natural gas).
Investors envision a time when integrated green power facilities operate far offshore using the power from waves, currents and wind to desalinate and send power to shore and generate freshwater, all without fossil fuels. Some estimate 20 percent of the world”s power could someday come from such floating power plants.
The modern scientific pursuit of wave energy was begun in the 1970s by Professor Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in response to the energy crisis of that time, according to the Internet site Wikipedia. Many critics blame the oil industry for killing that project in the early 1980s, as the oil industry is believed to have killed the electric car and other innovations, according to both conspiracy buffs and some verified accounts.
Public forum Friday
Four local nonprofit groups are convening a meeting to provide information and promote public discourse on the issue. The Alliance for Democracy, Ocean Protection Coalition, Noyo Headlands Unified Design Group, and Mendonoma Marine Life Conservancy, will present a free public forum on First Friday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. at Fort Bragg Town Hall.
A panel including Outer Continental Shelf Coalition Co-chair Richard Charter, Fort Bragg Mayor Doug Hammerstrom, and Noyo Headlands Unified Design Group (NHUDG) Co-founder George Reinhardt, will discuss “Wave Energy: Opportunity or Boondoggle?”
KZYX&Z FM News Director Annie Esposito will moderate, with public comment following.
Information ranging from wave energy basics, to jurisdiction of the ocean and potential environmental impacts will be presented. A report also will be made on the results of an Oct. 2 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meeting in Portland.
All are invited; donations to cover costs are appreciated. Please bring your own coffee cup. A courtyard mixer begins at 6:30 p.m. For information or to carpool, call 964-9777.
