By MICHELLE KLAMPE/OSU News Service
The last major pieces of the contract to build the wave energy test facility PacWave South near Waldport have been executed, paving the way for the completion of the Oregon State University-led facility off the central coast.
PacWave South will be the first utility-scale, grid-connected wave energy test site in the United States. The facility will offer wave energy developers the opportunity to try different technologies for harnessing the power of ocean waves and transmitting that energy to the local electrical grid.
PacWave project leaders recently authorized the procurement of nearly 50 miles of cable that will deliver wave-generated energy to a shoreside facility where it can be fed to the local electrical grid.
They also just finalized the contract for construction of the shoreside facility, said Burke Hales, PacWave’s chief scientist and a professor in the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
“These are the last two major pieces of the project,” Hales said. “The cable manufacturing and installation is the most technically challenging aspect. Authorization of the manufacturing is a huge milestone for PacWave and is critical to its success.”
The ocean test site will be located on a sandy-bottomed stretch of the Pacific Ocean away from popular commercial and recreational fishing reefs about seven miles southwest of Newport. The site will have four different test “berths,” which combined can accommodate up to 20 wave energy devices at any one time.
Power and data cables buried below the seafloor will connect the ocean test site to the shore-side facility four miles north of Waldport.
Louisiana-based industrial electrical services contractor R.T. Casey is overseeing the procurement, construction and installation of the cable for PacWave. The cables will be manufactured in Norway by the Paris-based firm Nexans, which also has facilities in the U.S.
The cable manufacturing process is expected to begin soon and will take about a year. The goal is for the cables to arrive in the spring of 2024 for installation in the summer of 2024, Hales said.
Once installed, the subsea cables will come ashore at the Driftwood Beach State Recreation Site, where they will connect to terrestrial cables in an underground vault. The terrestrial cables will connect to the shoreside facility on Northwest Wenger Lane, just off Highway 101 north of Waldport.
Corvallis-based contractor Gerding Builders has been selected to construct the shoreside facility. Work on that piece of the project is expected to begin this spring.
$80 million project
The recently enacted federal fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations legislation provides for an additional $22 million in funds to continue construction of the PacWave project.
PacWave South is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of Oregon and other public and private entities. OSU is managing the construction and operation of the more than $80 million facility.
Last year crews completed the installation of underground conduits that will house the subsea and terrestrial cables that will carry wave-generated energy from the devices to the shoreside facility.
At the shore-side facility, the wave-generated power can be connected to the local power grid, which is operated by the Central Lincoln People’s Utility District. PacWave South’s connection to the power grid will provide wave energy developers with the ability to test the efficacy of their devices as well as mechanisms for turning the energy they capture into a commodity with value on the energy market.
Based on current timelines, PacWave could be operational in 2025.
The U.S. Department of Energy has already identified and provided funding to a slate of wave energy developers who will begin testing their devices once the PacWave facility is completed, Hales said.
“It’s really great that this pipeline of developers is already in place,” he said. “We have also had a number of other companies reaching out to see when we might be ready for them to use the testing facilities. There are a lot of developers working on alternative energy development and interest in wave energy is really picking up.”
Oregon State has pursued development of a wave energy test facility for more than a decade to accelerate the development of this industry. There currently is no U.S. facility for developers to measure the electrical and environmental performance of their devices at this scale.