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Scientists, cadets try to harness wave power

Growing dread over America’s oil addiction has redoubled interest in solar panel farms, windmills and even bio-fuel alternatives to foreign petroleum.

Now, a small team of scientists and Air Force Academy cadets are attempting to unlock power from an endless energy source: deep-sea waves.

The academy’s Aeronautics Research Center is designing, on a small scale, submerged platforms fitted with so-called “underwater windmills.” The implications are enormous.

Replicated on a large scale, researchers believe these offshore units could harness waves — up to 25 times more energy-rich than wind — to power seaside cities. From ocean’s surface, these underwater generators would be visible only as buoys warding off passing ships.

Although the scientific community’s foray into ocean energy has been light so far, producing power from waves “could be a whole industry unto itself,” said Thomas McLaughlin, head of the academy’s aeronautics research center. With fellow researcher Stefan Siegel, he’s pushing a small class of cadets to improve the generator’s design.

“Right now, wave power is a tiny, tiny niche,” Siegel said. “And there’s precious little funding out there for the basic research idea.”

The Air Force is the U.S. government’s largest oil consumer and, under pressure from the White House, the service is aggressively pursuing synthetic coal fuels — as well as new innovations including mini-nuclear plants, fuels derived from organisms and fields of photovoltaic grids.

More than simply designing its own alternative energy sources in-house, the Air Force wants to kick-start fledgling new-wave energy industries. The service is now working with state officials in Montana to prod private sector coal-to-liquid synthetic fuel production in a region near Malmstrom Air Force Base.

The wave energy project was born from the academy’s research on “fluid dynamics” — like water, wind is a fluid — in the aeronautics department’s research wing.

Other scientific forays into ocean wave power have focused on surface waves, “which are the most destructive,” Siegel said. “Major projects have been ripped to pieces even during deployment.”

The cadet-driven research, however, seeks to tap into deeper waves using rows of cylinder-mounted blades. The design is not unlike the water wheels dating back to the Middle Ages.

No commercial incarnation of a wave energy farm exists, although the Pacific Gas and Electric Company said in December it will support a floating plant that relies on the up-and-down motion of giant buoys. A similar project planned by Portugal has yet to debut.

Although the academy’s research could trigger larger private-sector projects benefiting the nation as a whole, McLaughlin notes that that “we have a national security interest in making sure the U.S. produces its own energy ... and we certainly have a lot of Air Force bases near oceans.”