The waters off Fort Bragg would play host to a showdown between different wave energy machines still in the imagination stage, the Fort Bragg City Council heard Monday night from a Pacific Gas and Electric spokesman.
This was the first Mendocino Coast presentation since 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.
PG&E is seeking the exclusive right to study for a period of about three years an area 17 miles north to south by 4 miles wide, starting about one half mile off the Mendocino Coast and extending up to six miles offshore.
PG&E”s Northern California manager of project development and energy procurement, Gregory Lamberg, explained to the council that a much smaller square of only 4 square miles would ultimately be used. “We have a large green and we are looking where to place the golf ball,” he said.
That “golf ball would still be nearly twice as big as the city of Fort Bragg itself, which is 2.7 square miles.
PG&E”s “WaveConnect” plan would test multiple ocean powered technologies from up to four manufacturers, all devices connected to one transmission cable. PG&E hopes that the discharge outlet from the city wastewater plant can be used for a cable to take the power to the PG&E power station on Grove Street, its application states.
Most of the wave energy devices float and looked like buoys on the slideshow presented by Lamberg. But the PG&E application shows many of the devices get their power not from waves but from the motion of the ocean at depths ranging from 60 to 600 feet. All will be moored to the bottom and float in clusters.
Lamberg 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.
Lamberg said there are a dozen designs. While smaller companies are able to consider just one experimental technology, PG&E has an emerging technology division that allows it to study and help develop a range of ideas.
“We are going to fall down a few times before we walk with this,” he said.
One that has been touted by the Electric Power Research Institute is the Pelamis design, which resembles a chain of floating redwood tree sized logs. Locals have wondered why EPRI is so intent on this design.
Lamberg said “bathometric” factors along the northern coast of California make it one of the best places in the United States for generation of wave power. Exposure to northwest swells make local wave energy greater than in Southern California. Analysis of 25 years of data from offshore buoys show 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 create the needed wave action.
He said studies by the research institute, which is under contract with PG&E to get the utility giant through the permitting process for projects in Eureka and Fort Bragg, show that as much as 5,000 megawatts of wave power could be generated off the California coast.
Last year power use in California peaked at 68,000 megawatts, he said. As exciting as the potential is for wave power, it might be an exaggeration even to say it is in its infancy.
“Right now worldwide there is 4 megawatts of power operating [from wave energy], so this is a very new technology,” Lamberg warned. That present output of the entire world would only be about half of what Fort Bragg uses in a year.
Because the technology is so new, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and PG&E have no model on how long such projects take or what studies are required.
“It is being based on the hydroelectric model, so the model we are going through is the same as if we were building a dam on a river,” Lamberg said.
He said it would likely be five years before PG&E had devices in the water but that all timeframes are estimates at this point. The utility must pledge to spend money and complete the study to get the permit, so the investment is substantial.
Just a year ago, when the Fort Bragg City Council listened to a presentation on a local power plant, wave power was still at the idea stage in the United States.
But now, federal files are full of applications. Portugal, Spain, the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Australia are all planning new wave-energy plants.
“It isn”t the Klondike quite yet, nor is it the shale oil madness of Alberta, but people are talking that way. In Oregon real money is coming to the table,” said local energy activist George Reinhardt in an interview.
Reinhardt told the council the Fort Bragg plant would be similar to the Wave Hub off the United Kingdom, one of the best known wave energy efforts in the world, which is in the development stage (www.wavehub.co.uk). That project also features competing technologies and inventors.
Simultaneous with the Fort Bragg effort, PG &E also filed for a study area off Eureka which is about twice as big as the local study area (136 square miles). That effort also promises a technology competition. No other such experiment is currently contemplated in the United States, according to Lamberg and other sources.
“I”m pleased with the vision PG&E is bringing to this,” said Reinhardt. “This WaveConnect idea is a strong one. Certainly we don”t want to commit to a single nascent technology. Perhaps we could benefit financially from being part of this whole process of figuring out which of these technologies are viable.”
After the Fort Bragg City Council heard the initial presentation in August, they backed the idea of wave energy in an October resolution that does not name PG&E. Next, a January meeting was held in Noyo Harbor where what City Manager Linda Ruffing described as a diverse group of stakeholders, such as fishermen and seaweed harvesters, presented their concerns. That meeting was not noticed to the newspaper.
Next came the surprise news that PG&E had filed its preliminary permit application with FERC.
“Lo and behold, the city was informed in late February that PG&E had filed for a preliminary permit,” Ruffing told the council.
Ruffing said in an interview prior to the meeting that Mendocino County might have acted had PG&E not moved so quickly.
At Monday”s meeting, Lamberg promised the process would be open and would involve extensive community meetings and consensus building. He promised exhaustive environmental studies would “leave no stone unturned.”
“If we put machines out in the ocean, there are going to be a lot of people with concerns, and we want to listen to those concerns before selecting the best piece of ”real estate” possible,” Lamberg said.
He also promised the devices would not be put into the water “unless we can get the fishermen happy.”
One problem with the plant is that the power grid along the Mendocino Coast is older with lower capacity than that inland, a situation to which residents who sat for days or weeks without power this winter can attest .
Lamberg said only that there would be problems connecting a power plant with a 60 KV line system found along the coast, but there were real possibilities of linking to the grid over the hill.
The 40 megawatt power plant would produce about six times as much power as the Mendocino Coast uses. Reinhardt asked “who will benefit,” and touted energy independence from the plant, as well as its value in allowing locals to help the move away from fossil fuels to sustainable sources.
Councilman Dave Turner asked if the utility was considering helping install a breakwater that would greatly improve access to Noyo Harbor.
“Is that on your drawing board?” Turner asked.
“No, it is not,” Lamberg declared flatly. But then he added, “The drawing board is a white board right now that is being added to. It could be added to the drawing board in the future.”
Councilman Dan Gjerde persisted, saying that the harbor community has needed a breakwater for half a century and that the federal government had pledged to pay up to 80 percent of the construction cost.
“It is something PG&E could do to endear itself to the harbor community ? coming up with that 10 or 20 percent match, after all it would help you service the energy devices from Noyo Harbor, because you could get in and out more safely, especially with larger boats,” Gjerde said.
Lamberg said PG&E would learn more about the history of the breakwater effort and “take a fresh look at the concept.”
“We will take a look at that and the benefits to the project and how the economics work in,” Lamberg answered Gjerde.
In California, cities are now permitted to aggregate the total electric loads of their willing residents to negotiate the buying and selling of electric power. Mayor Doug Hammerstrom asked if the city could use such a process to participate in financing and ownership of the long term income stream from the power plant.
Lamberg said the financing was beyond his expertise but that such a public-private partnership would be worth looking at, with tax benefits, bond issuance all factoring in.
“We are at the very beginning, everything is on the table,” he said.
Turner asked, if lines to Willits went down, whether Fort Bragg could run off the power from its offshore wave energy plant through the substation or if the whole grid would go down. In years past, the Georgia Pacific mill provided power to portions of a town often left without power for days or weeks by the low quality coastal grid.
“That is a very complicated question that requires a lot of load-flow studies to be done,” Lamberg said.
“I want to say yes to your question, but it would require some load-flow studies.”
Turner asked that those questions be asked to the people at PG&E with those answers, and that the city could then participate in those studies with the goal of Fort Bragg being able to power itself from the waves off its shores.
After two years of permitting and three years of intensive study, the utility then would put devices into the water to generate 5 megawatts of power, for a period that Lamberg said it was too early to speculate on. If all that was successful, the utility would gradually ramp up to the 40 megawatt power plant. Lamberg said the timeframes are all estimates, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking at ways of streamlining the process.
Hammerstrom said he had heard that dialogue had started at the January meeting in Noyo Harbor, although he wasn”t there.
“It didn”t reach a point where everyone had fully digested that dialogue and had their say on it. It would be good to continue,” he said.
Lamberg said there is a parallel approval process to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission effort for funding from the California Public Utilities Commission.
“When we do start progressing forward once all the funding has been approved, you will see publicly noticed workshops in the area to encourage as much participation as possible. I submit to you the dialogue has not begun,” Lamberg said.
Lamberg said to expect those to begin in 60 to 90 days. Meetings will be held in Fort Bragg, he added.
Reinhardt and Mayor Doug Hammerstrom asked how many jobs might be produced. Lamberg responded that it was too early to say.
PG&E is in early discussions with wave energy companies Ocean Power Technologies of New Jersey, the U.K”s Ocean Power Delivery and Ireland”s Finavera Renewables, the environmental blog Green Wombat reported.
The Australian Weblog has kept close tabs on the details of the Fort Bragg wave energy project and has pictures of some of the technologies being considered by PG&E.
Lamberg also detailed PG&E”s commitment to sustainable and clean energy which he charactarized as being at the head of the class for utilities nationwide.
Councilman Jere Melo asked, “What can the city do to assist?”
Lamberg said the city could provide leadership and hold meetings and he asked people to “remain open-minded” and hoped that all sides could engage in a candid process.
Fort Bragg City Manager Linda Ruffing is hopeful for synergies between wave energy and another dramatic item from Monday”s agenda — the Noyo Marine Science Center.
Ruffing said in an interview the hope is that the fishing fleet could gain work as a research fleet in all that is being contemplated. Paul Siri gave a presentation on that project immediately following the proposal.
“I am sorry Mr. Lambert left because this was an important aspect. They must be really busy because they haven”t been returning my phone calls,” Siri said.
Siri said the PG&E proposal was exciting and a good dovetail with the center. The center would study currents which are integral to wave energy and city officials hope the confluence of the two proposals could generate good paying local jobs, research and resources and opportunities for local schools and students.
“I am sure I will get together with Greg another time,” Siri added.
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 plant could also disrupt currents and waves. It would cause unknown impacts on whales, tidepool life and even surfers, who would suffer lower wave heights, the local audience said The floating station would need to find ways to keep seals and sea birds from becoming dependent on the experimental devices, some of which would resemble giant redwood trees. Lambert said some think the devices could support and harbor marine life while others feel they could do damage.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has granted 22 permits for ocean study in four years and has another 12 pending, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. Most are off Washington and Oregon, but one is off Fort Bragg and two more are off Humboldt County.
Generally, one megawatt is considered to be enough electricity to supply 1,000 homes. A megawatt (MW) is one million watts and a kilowatt (kW) is one thousand watts. Ten 100 watt bulbs would use a kilowatt of power when turned on.
