14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time in the not too distant past, people tried to harness ocean and sea waves into electrical energy but failed. Well, not totally failed but never really managed to come up with a setup good enough to justify the cost of setting it up.
This is because it's tricky to harness kinetic, rotary energy from the wobbly waves and then turn that into electricity.
A company called CorPower Ocean claims to have finally pulled it off though. Their setup moors a buoy to the bottom of the ocean, but still allows it to float on the surface of the water.
The actual wave energy converter mechanism sits halfway between the ocean floor and the buoy itself. The mechanism uses a geared drivetrain instead of a hydraulic pump to generate electricity.
Basically, there are a bunch of small pinion wheels inside that convert linear motion into rotation, which causes a flywheel to spin and, thus, the kinetic energy needed to generate electrical power.
The drivetrain itself even enhances the buoy's own movements, maximizing energy production without causing the buoy to go out of sync with the wave rhythm.
All in all, one buoy with a diameter of 26 feet / 8 meters should be able to produce 250-300 kilowatts. I won't be surprised if I hear about CorPower buoys being installed along the entirety of the Atlantic coastline.