Meet the Ukrainian woman solving the ‘five fear factors’ of wave energy

euronews (in English)

Wave energy can produce much more energy than wind power, with much less space, why aren’t we using it more?

Transcript

00:00 According to the United Nations, 60% of the global greenhouse gas emissions are derived

00:07 directly from the way that we currently produce our electricity.

00:10 Wave energy can really be a game changer in that regard.

00:13 Hello, I'm Ina Braverman, founder and CEO of EcoWavePower.

00:20 The need for wave energy is unreliable because two-thirds of the world's population are currently

00:24 living on the coastline.

00:25 We can give clean electricity to people right in proximity to their homes instead of driving

00:31 electricity from some city or country center to the locations on the coastline.

00:37 We basically attach floaters to existent man-made structures such as piers, breakwaters, jetties,

00:43 and other types of marine structures.

00:45 The floaters are going up and down with the movement of the waves.

00:48 They're pushing hydraulic cylinders, which are transmitted by the gradable fluid, into

00:53 land-located accumulators.

00:54 A pressure is being built, which is used to turn the hydromotor, turn in the generator,

01:00 and via the generator, we send the clean electricity into the grid.

01:06 The density of water is actually 832 times greater than the density of air, meaning wave

01:13 energy can produce much larger electricity amounts with much smaller spaces, smaller

01:18 devices, which is a big advantage.

01:21 99% of the developers in the wave energy industry have decided to pursue offshore technologies,

01:29 and this created five problems which were common to all developers.

01:33 So the first one was the price of their systems, because when you're putting a power station

01:38 in the middle of the ocean, you need ships and divers and underwater mooring and cables.

01:44 So the installation, the operation, the maintenance becomes sky-high in terms of the cost.

01:49 Environmentalists, which were supposed to be the greatest proponents and supporters

01:54 of offshore wave energy, were actually objecting, because it created a new presence on the seabed,

02:00 which disturbed the marine environment and changed the ecological balance, since the

02:03 only thing in the water are the floaters, which belong in the water, and all the expensive

02:09 equipment, the generators, the conversion mechanism, and so on, is located on land,

02:14 just like a regular power station.

02:16 So that enables us a cost-efficient and reliable design.

02:20 Another problem was the survivability and reliability of those systems.

02:26 So basically, when you're that far into the offshore, you're exposed to wave heights of

02:30 20 meters, or sometimes even higher, and unfortunately, no man-made stationary equipment can avoid

02:36 waves of 20 meters and up.

02:39 Insurance companies saw that it's so expensive and breaking down, they were really reluctant

02:43 to insure offshore wave energy technologies.

02:46 Because we're connected to breakwaters, we have a patented storm protection mechanism,

02:50 that when the waves are too high for the system to handle, the floaters actually automatically

02:54 go up above the water level, and only when the storm passes, the floaters go back into

02:59 the water and commence operation.

03:01 Because we're cost-efficient and reliable, we also have full insurance from global reputable

03:06 insurance companies.

03:07 And then, on top of all of these problems, there became a big question mark on whether

03:12 wave energy can even safely connect to the electrical grid.

03:15 Because not many companies, if at all, have connected back then.

03:18 We have been connected to the grid in Gibraltar for six years.

03:21 Now, we've just connected our second power station to the grid in Israel, which became

03:26 the first wave energy power station in the history of Israel to ever connect to the national

03:31 electrical grid.

03:32 We're very, very excited about it.

03:34 [MUSIC]

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