Energy from the motion of the ocean

[jpak]

http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/14/magazines/fsb/nextlittl...

(FSB Magazine) -- If you wanted to choose the perfect location for capturing the ocean's energy, you couldn't do much better than the Oregon coast. Waves arrive there with immense power, having traveled across thousands of miles of open water with few barrier islands, reefs or other obstructions to slow them down.

Some are so large that they can be tracked by Satellite days before they arrive. Starting in 2007, those massive, ceaseless waves will help light homes and businesses along the West Coast, thanks to an entrepreneur named George Taylor.

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The company, founded by Taylor and a business partner, Joseph Burns (who died in 2001), began operations in 1994 and now employs 35, with about $5.4 million in annual sales for 2005. But if the project in Reedsport, on Oregon's central coast, pays off, that revenue number could grow substantially. "The market is huge, and the world will spend $200 billion on new generation equipment over the coming decades," Taylor says. "In 20 years China alone will be consuming all the energy that the entire world uses now."

Buttressing Taylor's optimism, researchers at Oregon State University say that only 0.2 percent of the ocean's untapped wave energy could power the entire world. This figure may seem incredible, but water is a very dense medium, about 1,000 times thicker than air, and capable of transmitting immense energy when in motion.

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