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Coos Bay OPT Wave Park
OPT is proposing to develop the first utility scale, commercial wave park in North America at Coos Bay, Oregon. The planned size of this park is up to 100 MW and it will be the largest wave energy project in the world when it is completed. The wave park will be located approximately 2.7 miles off the coast of Oregon, west of the towns of Coos Bay and North Bend. The Coos Bay OPT Wave will utilize OPT’s next generation PB500 PowerBuoys in their first commercial deployment in the United States. The wave park will consist of up to two hundred (200) PowerBuoys, twenty (20) undersea substations, and a submarine cable to deliver the electricity generated from this wave park into the grid served by the Pacific Northwest Power Grid. Each PB500 PowerBuoy® has a maximum sustained generating capacity of 500 kiloWatts.
The Coos Bay OPT Wave Park will supply 275,000 MegaWatt-hours annually to the grid based on the wave resource at this location. This community based renewable energy project will provide enough power for 24,900 homes1. Electricity generated by OPT’s clean, renewable PowerBuoy system will displace 140,250 tons of carbon dioxide each year the project is in operation2. This is the equivalent of removing 29,000 cars off the road annually3.
OPT will be engaging the project stakeholders in a collaborative process similar to the process used at Reedsport which led to the submittal of the final license application for that project. We believe that using the foundation begun at Reedsport further demonstrates our commitment to collaborative, responsible development of wave energy which maximizes benefits to all stakeholders. This “do it right” approach demonstrates our long-term commitment towards environmental stewardship of coastal resources.
1 The average residential usage is 920 kWh/month in 2006 according to the Energy Information Agency. 2Based on 2004 data from the US Environmental Protection Agency & Chicago Climate Exchange. 3 Data adapted from The Climate Trust. |
