Wave-powered energy to hit LA

Terry Tamminen, President and CEO of AltaSea at the Port Los Angeles, visited onshore wave energy company Eco Wave Power’s new EWP-EDF One wave energy power station at Jaffa Port, Israel, on 7 September. The visit comes just weeks before the expected arrival of Eco Wave Power’s first US power station, to be located at AltaSea.

The AltaSea pilot station is part of Eco Wave Power’s increased focus on bringing its wave energy technology to the United States and expanding its presence worldwide. The company plans further deployments in Spain, Portugal and other locations, completing its 327.7 MW current project pipeline.

Eco Wave Power entered a collaboration agreement with AltaSea earlier this year and announced plans to install a first-of-its-kind wave energy pilot in AltaSea’s 14 ha campus located at the Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest seaport.

“It was great to visit Eco Wave Power’s pioneering wave energy power station at the Port of Jaffa and witness firsthand the generation of clean electricity through waves in action,” said Tamminen, who previously served as Secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency. “I am excited to have the pilot station on AltaSea’s campus in the coming weeks. Eco Wave Power’s technology will create a new way of generating renewable energy to help both California and the United States reach their goals to decrease our carbon footprint and use more innovative clean energy sources. Blue economy is the future.”

“It was our absolute pleasure to host Terry Tamminen at our EWP-EDF One wave energy power station at the Port of Jaffa, enabling him to see the innovative nature of our technology which will soon be implemented on the AltaSea campus at the Port of Los Angeles,” said Eco Wave Power founder and CEO Inna Braverman.

Braverman was recently in Los Angeles to speak at Vox Media’s prestigious Code Conference alongside entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Apple CEO Tim Cook and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The Code Conference coincided with a historic heatwave in Los Angeles, in which temperatures rose to record highs, causing widespread energy Flex Alerts and warnings about potential wildfires. The heatwave has caused the power grid to struggle to keep up with the surging demand, with threats of widespread rolling outages.

Eco Wave Power said this extreme weather pattern emphasises the need for the incorporation of innovative renewable energy sources, such as wave energy, to California’s national grid.

Citing the US Energy Information Administration, the company said wave energy off the nation’s coasts can generate the equivalent of about 66% of all the electricity generated across the US in 2020, which could help to significantly alleviate stress on California’s grid and prevent climate change-related phenomena such as heatwaves and fires.

“We are excited that our power station will soon arrive at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, which we believe will significantly reinforce our presence and commercialisation plan in the Unites States, while diversifying California’s renewable energy resources, creating local workplaces and assisting California towards its ambitious zero carbon emissions plans,” Braverman said.

Image credit: iStock.com/lindsay_imagery