America's First Onshore Wave Energy Site Starts Operating
- Editor OGN Daily
- 11 hours ago
- 1 min read
Eco Wave Power begins trial operations in California.
On a recent sunny morning in a channel at the Port of Los Angeles, seven blue steel structures that look like small boats were lowered into the ocean one by one. Attached to an unused wharf on a site that once housed oil tanks, they are now bobbing up and down with the waves to generate clean power.
The pilot will generate just a small amount of electricity that can be used locally, but the larger goal is to prove the technology works well enough to expand along 8 miles of breakwater at the port - enough to power up to 60,000 homes.
Co-founder and CEO Inna Braverman said that much power could be a “game changer in terms of clean energy production” for the port and the communities around it. “We’re starting here in LA, but we hope, aspire and believe that we will be in the United States and in other locations around the world,” she said.
The Department of Energy estimates that waves off the coasts of the United States could generate enough power to meet roughly one-third of America’s energy needs. It could also have the added benefit of complementing wind and solar in order to stabilize the electric grid.
“It’s the first U.S. project on breakwater, so it opens up the possibility to do that on multiple other ports in the U.S.,” said Rémi Gruet, CEO of the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. “It’s a moment where wave power is starting to turn from innovation projects to actual pilot projects that go toward industrialization and commercialization.”