Development
Limited
The Markets: Desalinization of seawater is a promising market. The Waveberg would generate the high-pressure water forced through a reverse-osmosis membrane. A single 150-foot Waveberg unit tuned to the waves of the California coast could supply the irrigation for 108 acres of land; this small-scale plant would generate $32,000 in revenues annually, at half the current price of $50 per acre-foot of Colorado River water.
San Diego area coastline (NASA)
One Waveberg could irrigate an average-sized golf course. Although installation and maintenance costs are higher, since a reverse-osmosis plant is needed, the return-on-investment is still 40%. Estimates of the immediate market for seaside irrigation of resort landscapes are 100 installations in southern California and 800 installations in Australia, Mexico, Chile and other coastal locations. Commercial application for agriculture will come slowly, but economic desalinization systems have a clear and significant potential along arid coastlines such as Chile. Experimentation in Saudi Arabia has demonstrated that for irrigation, 80% ocean water desalinization is sufficient for agriculture, as opposed to more than 95% required for potable water supplies.
The Aquamarine Oyster is a competing wave energy converter with a sea-water hydraulic power take off. They have shown that the fluctuations of flow due to the waves coming in sets can be accommodated by turning on and off parallel modules in a membrane desalinization plant. Energy costs account for 80% of the cost of reverse-osmosis desalinization. By using the pressurized water from the Waveberg directly, one saves losses through generation, transmission and pump motors, thereby increasing useful energy harvested by 30%.
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The clean energy generated by 500,000 Wavebergs could reduce green house gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels by 120 megatonnes annually.
To put this in perspective, consider total annual GHG emissions for:
Canada = 560
United States = 1850
World = 22,000
megatonnes
A megatonne is one million metric tonnes.
