Where is wave power possible?
Portugal’s Aguçadora Wave Park is the world’s first commercial wave farm. It opened in 2008 and between three units can produce 2.25 MW—enough to power more than 1,500 homes in Portugal. Scotland became the site of the next large project, a four-unit wave farm with a capacity of 3 MW. The world’s biggest hotspots for wave power include the western seaboard of Europe, the northern coast of England, and the Pacific coastlines of North and South America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Estimates for the U.S. west coast, for example, project that 40 to 70 kilowatts can be produced for every meter—for a coastline 1,000 miles long, that’s a lot of untapped energy. Check out the episode of Planet Mechanics where the team builds a wave energy converter in Ireland.
