Energy firm pulls plug on Oregon wave-power project

The quiet shuttering of an ambitious Oregon project — the nation’s first grid-connected, commercial-scale wave park — is the latest setback for the nascent wave-energy sector in the United States.

By: Joshua Hunt and Diane Cardwell
The New York Times

PORTLAND — At the Port of Portland sits a 260-ton buoy filled with technology that can turn the movement of the ocean into electricity to power 100 homes. It rolled off an assembly line to great fanfare two years ago and received the nation’s first commercial license to operate.

It was to be the start of the closely watched follow-up to a failed attempt in the 1990s to harness the power of the Pacific Ocean, in which one of the first test-buoy generators quickly sank.

But this time around, the buoy did not even get that chance.

Its maker, Ocean Power Technologies, quietly abandoned the project last month without ever deploying its machine off the coast.

Despite receiving at least $8.7 million in federal and state grants, Ocean Power told regulators that it could not raise enough money to cover higher-than-expected costs and would instead pursue a similar project in Australia, backed by a $62 million commitment from that country’s government. Read more