Creating energy from waves

Living a good chunk of my year in places getting battered by massive waves, i have long wondered why this enormous, incredible amount of energy each wave delivers is not being used to create energy for us humans.

If you have ever witnessed Nazaré, Portugal - a tiny, beautiful village which regularly showcases the biggest waves in the world - in its full glory, you will have felt the enormous power being set free.

With every single wave. Wave after wave. And after wave. And another one.

There is such a huge potential out there. It is an always switched-on power plant.

Well, today i learned - there is a project like this, just down the coast, in Peniche, Portugal.
I can think of plenty reasons why big corporations and government have no interest in preferring resources like waves to oil, i am very happy to learn about this. (unless it turns out to destroy surfbreaks!)

Let me introduce WAVE ROLLER, a finnish project which is aiming to do exactly that.
It uses a physical force called wave surge - here is how it works:

"The so-called surge phenomenon is a universal physical event that occurs when waves approach the shore line.

Waves in deep water (deeper than half the length of the wave) are essentially water particles moving in a circular motion.

As the waves approach the shore, they start "shoaling" as some of the water particles moving in a circular motion come into contact with the sea bed. This interaction with the sea bed elongates the circular motion into a horizontally elliptic shape as the particles flatten and stretch. This in turn amplifies the horizontal movement of the water particles in the near-shore area, creating a strong surge zone which is the optimal location for WaveRoller.

In addition to amplifying the back and forth movement of water, the near-shore area has other advantages that make it a good location for installing wave energy converters. For a more in-depth discussion on how near-shore and off-shore wave energy resources differ, visit Near-shore vs. Off-shore."

This is an incredible project, and it´s just starting out. I hope by spreading the word about this people will slowly become more aware of our natural, unexploitable resources and come up with ideas to use them.

You don´t have to be a scientist to come up with a wonderful project, just think of the Ocean Cleanup Project. Material for another post!

Thank you for reading, and please spread the word about awesome new technologies like this!

Further reading:
follow their progress on their twitter account: https://twitter.com/WRoller
Wave roller project: http://aw-energy.com/
Developing corrosion- and foulproof structure: http://oceanic-project.eu/