Aug 26 2010
The City of San Francisco is in a mood to explore and tap energy from alternate energy sources such as wind, geothermal, solar, wave and tidal under the stewardship of its Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The city is reviewing the impact of the renewable projects on its environment. Currently the city is planning to keep underwater devices away from its famous Ocean Beach to exploit its wave power to produce renewable energy and to use this project to assess the wave power that can help them to estimate the viability of creating a wave farm in the location.
Mayer of San Francisco
According to Ronald Yeung, Professor of UC Berkeley University, Ocean Beach has enough potency for building a potential wave energy farm because the powerful waves are created by gales from Artic. His reasoning was supported by the city construction contractors who concluded that the new facility when created could offer up to 30 MW electric power enough to support around 30,000 houses in the vicinity. The environmental evaluation work currently conducted includes examining the movement of sediments from the sea and understanding the patterns of whale migration in deciding suitable places on the sea floor to install wave power instruments.
Following the selection of suitable places, suitable type of energy creating devices will be selected from that of floating near the surface type, drifting in mid-water and rolling type of seabed equipments. Once the wave power transforming equipments are set up after availing permission for installing equipments and grants, the facility will be further utilized for assessing the potential of installing wind turbines in the location.
Source: http://www.sfmayor.org/