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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. Solar and wind power are bearing fruit when it comes to transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy. After all, the potential of sunlight and wind are limitless. Well, another naturally occurring phenomenon holds even more potential than solar power and wind energy, and some of the best conditions exist right off the Oregon coast. It's wave energy, and our state is nearly perfect to harness it. Today on the show, you'll hear a conversation with the director of Pacwave, an outgrowth of Oregon State University that is setting up two massive testing sites off the Oregon coast so that entrepreneurs can test out their latest wave energy tech. But while wave energy is limitless, funding from the federal government is not, and that's becoming a challenge. Dan Hellin, the director of Pacwave, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
DAN HELLIN: It's pleasure. Thanks for having me. Michael.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm going to start with probably the most basic question of all. Tell our audience, what is Pacwave?
DAN HELLIN: It's a fair question. So Pacwave is a wave energy testing facility located an open ocean wave energy test facility located off the coast of Newport, and we're part of Oregon State University, and we have two sites off the coast, basically, where companies who are developing devices that will capture the energy of waves and convert it into electricity, they can come and test their devices out in the open ocean.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tell us how and when it started.
DAN HELLIN: So, we are we're currently just about to become operational. We're just winding up our construction phase, but work to develop pack wave started probably in around 2008 but really in earnest, in around 2011 2012 and that was when some of my colleagues at Oregon State University and Oregon Sea Grant started reaching out to communities to gage people's feeling and support for The idea of having an offshore wave energy test site located in the ocean off their communities. So, work started back in back then, and then in 2013 or so, we started our permitting process, which went on for about eight years. And then 2021 is when we started construction. So, we had about four years of construction, which we're, as I said, just wrapping up now and about to move into our operational phase.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And so, I would imagine, does it sort of work like this? Perhaps a private company or maybe some that has government funding comes to you and says, we have this idea. We want to test it out, and then you kind of work together to sort or you will work together to sort of assign them a space and time to be able to test their technologies?
DAN HELLIN: Yeah, absolutely, so. So that's the basic process. We have a lot of conversations with companies who are potentially interested. But it takes a long time for people to reach that stage of being ready to test in the open ocean. But when they're getting towards that point, they are private companies, most of them, at the moment, have some level of federal funding. They then approach us and we start talking through, you know, the design of their device, whether it's suitable for our site, whether it fits within our permitting. And then start working on the logistics of how they're going to do that. And there's a lot of documentation they have to provide to us, you know, operation and maintenance plans, emergency response plans, etc., which we sort of review and ensure that that they're going to have a successful test and that it's going to work at pack wave. And then the idea is, is that we work very collaboratively with them through the whole process of getting them prepared to come and test and then actually deploying, having their device out for, you know, a year, two years, three years, and then recovering their device and decommissioning their test. So it is very much a sort of partnership that we expect to have with these companies who are testing with us.
MICHAEL DUNNE: As perhaps, basically as you can. Can describe how wave energy works.
DAN HELLIN: That's part of the challenge. Okay, it's and the reason I say that is there's a lot of different ideas out there. I often point at wind and, you know, maybe not very fairly, but you know, most wind turbines are based on the idea of a windmill. Windmills have been around for a very, very long time with wave energy. There is no sort of general concept that everyone's following. There's a lot of different ideas. There are devices that sit on the sea floor and generate power from the pressure of the waves moving over them. There’re devices that bob up and down like buoys, their devices that are like articulated rafts, and it's the movement between the units of that raft that generate power so that that's really part of the reason that a test site needed. I i, the way I put it is, there's been no convergence of technology. We haven't got to the stage where it's clear that one or two designs are the best. And when I say best, I mean the best at generating power, the best at surviving the ocean conditions, taking or putting devices out there for a long period of time out in the ocean, which is, as we all know, and especially off Oregon, can be a pretty tough environment to have equipment offshore, especially during the winter. So basically, the idea is to have a test site like this so that we can work out which of these designs is actually or several designs are going to be the ones that are really going to be the best for power generation moving forward.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Dan, I'm going to call upon your powers of painting a picture, because this is just audio, but if you could kind of describe for the audience, what does, what does the test site look like?
DAN HELLIN: So we have, we have the site offshore. Well, we have two sites, but I'll focus on our grid connected site, which is our flagship site called pack wave south. Okay, so we have an area of the ocean which is about a little over two miles north, south and a little over a mile wide, pretty much straight out from Newport airport. It's about seven miles offshore, and it's a location that was selected by the local fishing community. And basically, what we have out there is very little at the moment, we are about to put in some corner marker buoys, so there'll be buoys marking the site, and then we have subsea cables running to shore from that site, but they're on the sea floor or buried under the sea floor. So, the visual impact at the moment of the test site is minimal. If you're out there in a boat, if you're out there on a vessel. At the moment, we have a couple of monitoring instruments out there, but otherwise, very, very little. When we have devices testing then, you know, some of these devices are large. You know, there's one that was built up in Portland a few years ago that's 130 feet long and 70 feet wide and 70 feet tall. Most of that submerged under the under the ocean when it's when it's deployed, but it's still a big structure out there. So, when we have devices out there. There will be a lot more to see, but most of them are pretty low, lying in the water from shore, you probably won't see anything, as we're seven miles offshore, sure. So, yeah, it's, you know, the visual impact isn't a lot. You know, there will be equipment out there in that specific area, but not a major impact visually.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'd like you to articulate it. Why, Oregon?
DAN HELLIN: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a really good question. So, so generally, the really good wave regimes are on Western facing coasts. So, you know, that's the Pacific Northwest. Is great. Once you get down to sort of Southern Oregon, into California, the waves beginning to be less ideal. And to the north of us, up in Washington and up in, you know, Canada and Alaska, you know, the wave conditions are. You know, there's even a larger wave resource than there is in Oregon. But there's a number of reasons why Oregon sort of is perfectly located. One there's we already had. Existing infrastructure on the coast. We have electrical transmission lines not far from the coast. We have distribution systems near the coast. We have communities, and we have ports along the coast, which you know, if you think of the Washington coast, there's not a lot of ports along that area. So that's critically important to the support, to be able to support a test site like this. Obviously, the wave resources, fantastic. We also had a lot of support from, as I mentioned, the site itself. The location was selected by the fishing community. You know, there's a lot of support for this test site all the way up from the local community level, all the way up through the state government, all the way up to our federal representatives, which is also critically important for a site like this. And then, of course, I have to have a plug for OSU is, you know, there's some great institutions within Oregon who have been working on wave energy for a long time, and I think that's also critically important. So, there's a number of factors that really made Oregon, you know, ideal as a test site in the US.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Generally speaking, do you have an idea of what wave energy's potential is?
DAN HELLIN: Technically, wave energy has an enormous amount of potential. Comparing it to wind and solar, you know, to well established renewable energies. You know, the debt, the energy density, partly because of the density of water, of waves, is, I think it's about five times the amount of power that wind has and 10 times the amount that solar has. And one of the nice things about waves, especially off somewhere like Oregon, is even on a calm day in Oregon, you've still got those ocean swells happening. So, it's very predictable, and it's very continuous as a form of energy that could be captured so enormous amount of potential, but a lot of challenges with it, partly because of the seasonal power that you get, you know, with your winter storms and so on, having to design devices to be able to withstand that. And part of, part of the issue with wave energy at the moment is there's very few places in the world where you can actually test at full scale, grid connected, sort of as real world as you can get, which is, you know, the reason pack wave has been established, but because of, partly because of that, you know, lack of testing facilities. There's been very little testing that's happened. So, the industry is, while there's a huge amount of potential there, you know, people will tell you that wave is 10 years, 20 years, some even say 30 years behind wind. So, it's going to take a while to be able to capture and realize the potential of wave energy. But the potential is there, and it is enormous. If we can find the devices that are going to be effective, that are going to survive, and then deploy them in the places where, where they're needed to start off with, you know, you're very unlikely to go immediately to large, you know, farms of wave energy devices. You know, most likely what you're going to see is devices deployed in in areas where electricity is really expensive, in isolated communities in Hawaii, in sorry, in Alaska, to communities in Hawaii, particularly in Alaska, where you have communities that are dependent on diesel generators and so on, and have very high costs of generating electricity. Early technology, wave energy device that would still be quite expensive becomes competitive in those situations.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I see. You've mentioned this term a few times, survivability, and I'm thinking, okay, like you pointed out, certainly, you know, storms off the coast of Oregon are notoriously strong, and then, of course, we also have the Cascadia subduction zone and potential for earthquakes and tsunami. How robust do these devices, these testing devices that you're going to liaise with, how robust do they have to be?
DAN HELLIN: That's, that's a very good question. So, a lot of these devices are big, as I mentioned before. So that's, you know, they're large, you know, generally, you know, steel structures. So, they, you know, they're pretty good at resisting the waves. You know, the forces of the waves, but you know, when we have winter storms here and we have 50-foot seas or something, it's cost prohibitive to design your device to, you know, constantly survive those types of seas. So, a lot of the developers, a lot of the companies who are developing this technology are looking at ways in. Which their devices can can go into almost a survival mode. And with wind turbines, you can feather the blades on them so that you know so the when the wind speed picks up too high, and they're looking at similar ideas with wave energy devices, there's some devices that, when they've got taught mooring lines down to the sea floor. Some of the devices can actually winch themselves down under the under the surface and down out of the worst of the wave conditions. Others basically disconnect their power take off, which is what is generating the power in conditions when it gets too extreme, and basically just wait out the storm until the conditions improve and then go back to power generation. But that's one of the things that needs to be proven, is, is how effective all of that is. A lot of this is is based on onboard sensors, so it's automatic. It's not like someone's controlling it from shore. But until we've tried and tested these systems, it's difficult to know how effective they are when they need to go into that sort of survival mode in extreme conditions.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm wondering too if it might be a point in Wave energy's favor is certainly you know, as you said, wind energy has been around perhaps longer, and I know that sometimes there's opposition to offshore wind, because it might sort of ruin the overall aesthetic of the coast and whatnot. And I'm wondering, as you've described with so many things, perhaps smaller and lower profile, could it be that, in addition to the benefits in terms of generating electricity is just simply that wave energy type systems might have less of a visual impact on the coastline?
DAN HELLIN: I think that's very true. You know, you have taking that these devices are going to be, you know, several miles offshore, potentially, you know, if they're only 20 or 30 feet above the surface of the ocean, you're just not going to see them. If you have a wind turbine that's, you know, 100 200 feet or something, you can see them from a much greater distance. So visually, yes, the impact is going to be a lot less, most likely with wave energy devices and some, of the more near shore devices, where our site seven miles offshore, so we can't test kind of more shallow water devices. But some of the more near shore devices, some of them are actually sea floor mounted, and sit on the sea floor so you don't actually have any surface expression at all, in which case you know the visual impact is going to be minimal. So, I suspect with these wave energy devices, as far as visual impact goes, it's going to be significantly less than, or there'll be less concern than there is with things like offshore wind.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What about environmental impacts? I mean, obviously, you describe stuff that's pretty small, and I know that there's cabling that goes to shore. Talk about, talk about the ways in which, you know, you look to mitigate any kind of impact on the ecosystem.
DAN HELLIN: Yeah, so I mentioned, you know, our permitting process was eight years, and a lot of that was, was trying to look at what the potential impacts might be. And I think this is one of the strengths with pack wave being part of Oregon State University, because most there's a huge amount of site characterization and monitoring that's done around planning for Pacwave and then actually building the site, and then operating the site. And that's largely done through the scientists at Hatfield Marine Science Center. So, we have a, you know, a great, fantastic team of scientists to be involved in this monitoring. And also, it's Oregon State University. So, OSU is, is a steward of the environment. So, you know, it's a great situation to have a test site run by OSU. Part of our permitting, as I said, was to look at what the impacts might be, and then a significant part is monitoring when we have devices in the water. So, we're monitoring for the effects on the sea floor. We're monitoring for acoustic impacts. We're monitoring for potential entanglement risks with marine mammals, for example, and monitoring for electromagnetic fields and so on. So, the hope is, is that when we have a test site like this, we can do a lot of research around these deployments and have a lot more information about what the potential environmental effects might be. Our belief, based on the information we have at the moment, is that there are, they aren't going to be significant, but you still need to monitor and you need to ensure that is the case. And then if we do find that there's impact, then we have to adapt what we're doing to minimize those impacts.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I have talked to a lot of entities, organizations that receive federal funding. And I know that some of that's really challenging right now, especially with some of the tone and whatnot coming out of the White House. I just wanted to ask you know, are there concerns about funding for Pacwave, but also for the entities that are going to want to come and test their mechanisms at Pacwave?
DAN HELLIN: Yeah, there's definitely increased uncertainty at the moment. You know, the funding climate has changed, and it has been challenging. There are a number of developers who are planning to come and test at pack wave, who were who have federal funding, and there's delays with that funding flowing, and that uncertainty means that they, you know, can't do things like start manufacturing. Can't, can't start fabricating their devices to come and test with us, which means that delays their test, pack, wave itself, where we've just in, we've just had a review period. We just, as I mentioned, finished construction, about to go into operations, and as part of that, we have a review by the Department of Energy, who primarily fund us. And we've completed that review process, and it went very well, but we're now waiting for the approval to move into our operational phase. So there is a, you know, we're cautiously optimistic that that's going to happen. We're hoping that it will happen soon, and that we can get on into with preparing for the developers, who we hope will be coming in next year. But we also need to be realistic, and if things get delayed, you know, we have to adapt our plans and operations to accommodate that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, this is fascinating. I think this is an amazing project. Dan Hellin, who is the director of Pacwave, really appreciate you spending some time with us and talking about Pacwave and the potential for wave energy.
DAN HELLIN: It was my pleasure. It's a topic I always like talking about.
MICHAEL DUNNE That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll check in with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and talk about his efforts to save funding for public media. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
