(lively music) (lively music continues) - More than 70% of the Earth is covered in water, and where there's open water, there's usually waves.

Waves traveling across the ocean's surface are pure energy.

(water splashing) What if we could harness this constant parade of waves moving towards our coast?

They could be an essentially unlimited source of renewable power that could help us cross the bridge to a clean energy future.

And that's All Science, No Fiction.

(gentle music) (vehicle beeping) (wave splashes) This might just look like a standard early-morning construction site, but it's probably not one you'd expect to see at an Oregon beach.

(machinery whirring) This drilling crew is running four mile-long pipes out into the ocean.

- They're basically drilling out from the parking lot of this State Park, and they're going down underneath the dunes, underneath the beach, and then out to about a mile.

- [Host] Through these pipes will run heavy-duty power cables designed to transport electricity generated from ocean waves.

It's all part of an Oregon State University-led project called PacWave.

(waves crashing) There's enough available energy in the waves off Oregon alone to power 6.4 million homes, that's more homes than in Oregon and Washington combined.

PacWave is a place where experimental wave energy converters can be tested out in the open ocean.

It'll have the largest capacity of any wave energy test facility in the world.

- People actually really like the idea of wave energy.

Lots of people come to the beach, a lot of people live along the coast, they can see and experience the power of the waves.

So the idea of trying to capture that energy is a concept they can grasp pretty quickly.

- One way energy travels through our world is through waves, and ocean waves are no exception.

The amount of energy in a wave depends on its height, or amplitude, and how fast it travels.

And some of the most energy-rich waves in the world can be found right here in the Pacific Northwest.

- Oregon is a Goldilocks of wave energy.

It's just right.

California has coastal infrastructure, but not a particularly good wave climate.

Washington has a good wave climate, but not nearly the coastal infrastructure that Oregon has.

We've got access, we've got infrastructure, we've got waves, and they sort of all overlap in an optimum way.

- [Host] Out in the ocean, the PacWave test facility is invisible to the naked eye.

It's a rectangle, roughly two miles long by one mile wide, divided into four testing areas.

Beginning in 2026, companies will deploy their wave energy prototypes, connect to the power cable on the seafloor, and track how well their devices convert energy from Oregon's mighty waves into usable electricity.

Having a place like PacWave to test creates opportunities for wave energy developers.

- And so having this done ahead of time basically allows you to focus on what you do best, which is build wave energy devices.

(machinery whirring) - [Host] But the sea floor isn't a blank slate, and any complex engineering project in the ocean is going to be sharing space with the local residents.

Sarah Henkel has been monitoring creatures, like Dungeness crabs and clams, that live on the ocean bottom in the project footprint.

- Along the cable route are sand dollars.

These sand dollars are a little smaller than you're probably used to.

But all the species offshore are tiny compared to what you would expect from the estuary.

- [Host] The monitoring will continue as the project comes online.

- If you've got a sandy sea floor that stretches for miles and miles and miles and you put structure in that sea floor, you're going to have changes no matter what.

- [Host] But in the past decade doing this work, she's witnessed climate change influence much larger, and more serious, changes to the ocean: marine heat waves, deadly dips in oxygen levels, ocean acidification and species moving to new areas or disappearing altogether.

- The emergency is climate change, and our production of carbon that is contributing to accelerating climate change.

The oceans are changing globally, locally.

I think, as a planet, we are moving towards the need to generate energy from a wide variety of sources.

- [Host] The enormous untapped storehouse of energy in the ocean makes it an intriguing target to pair with other renewables.

There are waves even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

But wave energy technology lags far behind solar and wind.

- If you say a wind turbine, everyone has the same picture in their mind.

If you say a wave energy device, there's such a variety.

- [Host] There's designs that bob, there's designs that fold, some work underwater, and some even push air through wind turbines.

- Because the wave devices have a very, very hard time testing at full scale, what you see is a Rube Goldberg collection of wildly divergent devices, no one really knows what works best in practice.

- [Host] But all wave energy developers face the same challenges out in the ocean, corrosive saltwater, harsh weather, and barnacles and other living creatures trying to make the energy converters their homes.

Then, there's the pesky problem of turning the slow up and down motion of waves into usable power.

- OK.

So here's a small scale version, and so what you're seeing is this portion of the hull.

You know, it's kind of like an iceberg, right, where you got, like, most of it, 3/4 of it anyway, is underwater when it's installed.

- [Host] At the AquaHarmonics workshop near Portland, engineers Alex Hagmuller and Riley Short are prepping a test on the company's mid-size wave energy prototype.

- That's part of all the testing we're doing here is pursuing the ideal gear ratio.

- [Host] The test simulates the up and down forces of the waves, but turned on its side so it actually fits in the building.

(footsteps pattering) - For this one, we're going to do a frequency of 0.1 hertz or a period of 10 seconds, you know, something in the range of, like, 2 or 3 foot wave.

OK, we're going to fire it up.

(keyboard clicks) (machinery whirring) Nice.

- [Host] With a device like this, simply responding to the slow up and down motion of the waves wouldn't generate enough power to be economical.

So the team is working with Portland State University professor Jonathan Bird to tap into the amplifying power of resonance.

- Famous example is like a glass.

If you, you know, eeeee, make the noise, then the glass could break, right?

And that's, if you think about it, that's a glass, and we're just using air to break it.

- [Host] Matching the frequency of the sound... - Eee, eee, eee, eee, eee, eee.

- [Host] To the innate, or natural, frequency of an object... - Eee, eee, eee, eee, eee, eee.

- [Host] Causes the vibrations to build and build until... (glass shatters) For AquaHarmonics, creating a wave energy converter that matches the frequency of the ocean waves increases the up and down motion of the device.

And the more it moves, the more power it generates.

At this size, the AquaHarmonics wave energy converter isn't being designed for large-scale electricity production, like you'd feed onto the grid to power homes.

- But as far as power production, that's just simply straight from the drum to a generator.

Right now, this is an e-bike motor.

- [Host] But by tapping into resonance, it can provide enough energy to power remote sensors, like tsunami warning buoys.

And high-speed internet, you know, for emergencies, anywhere on the open ocean.

- Why do this crazy thing, it's like, well, we believe it can be beneficial.

And we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't believe that.

- [Host] But they won't know how viable their system is until they get it out into the ocean to test.

- [Alex] Wave energy is very hardware poor.

We don't have the ability to iterate and fail fast, and I think we need a place that we can do that.

- [Host] And that's the solution Oregon's PacWave provides, a place for wave energy developers to test their new technology.

- And that's paramount to moving the industry forward.

(both laughing) - OPB members are the mighty waves that power everything we do.

Without you, Oregon Public Broadcasting programs like "All Science.

No Fiction."

wouldn't be possible.

Thanks for your ongoing support.

One way that energy travels through our world is waves and ocean waves are no exception.

I don't know if I can do it.

OK. OK. And don't miss out any of OPB's science, environment and arts programs by subscribing to OPB Insider at opb.org/allscience.

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