Regional news media were given an up close and personal tour Thursday of Oregon State University’s new wave energy testing station, bobbing in large sea swells 2 miles northwest of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. The Ocean Sentinel is a floating testing dock full of instruments, computers and other scientific equipment that is hooked up to a prototype wave energy device from New Zealand. It’s owned by a private company that wants impartial third party testing of their device to lend accuracy and credibility to their particular wave energy product which they would, of course, like to sell on the world market.
OSU’s National Marine Renewable Energy Center built the Ocean Sentinel and is expect to eventually have many more wave energy clients line up to have their devices tested as well.
But the Ocean Sentinel is somewhat limited in its range of tests. It doesn’t handle the full output of a large wave energy device, only some of that output. More robust testing must wait for a device to send its full electrical output by cable to a substation onshore. Four communities along the Oregon Coast are vying to build such a facility: Ft. Riley near Warrenton, Newport, Reedsport and Coos Bay. The suitability and cost effectiveness of each site is currently being weighed by OSU scientists. They expect to announce the top two candidates within a couple of weeks. Important criteria include having proper depths for wave energy devices close to shore, ease of routing an underwater power cable, closeness to an onshore substation and general support of the community for wave energy becoming a major user of offshore resources.
Once a site is selected, it’s expected to take several years to get the testing station up and running.
Ocean Sentinel is somewhat limited in ITS ability . . . .
Its is possessive. It’s is a contraction of it is.
English has many grammatical or spelling inconsistencies, or “exceptions” to its general rules of grammar and spelling and that’s one of them.
It’d be interesting to see a cost/benefit comparison of conservation measures vs. wave energy.
But then, this project might be another pork barrel project, like the NOAA headquarters bid that brought, let’s see, how many long term (as opposed to short term construction) jobs to Newport. How many? I’ve never seen any coverage in any local news entity of how many such jobs the NOAA headquarters has brought to Newport, specifically. In return for the what, $21 or was it $24 million the state spent to get the NOAA headquarters moved to Newport/South Beach.
But I guess there might be another temporary pork/monetary shot in the arm for a some people in Newport, so I guess it’s something Newport has to have.
It might be more useful if the city council et al looked at what’s already in the county, talked to the people in Newport and the county and asked them what they thought might contribute to the prosperity and increase in living wage jobs.
Such as: promoting the goat/dairy/ industry via development of other food products that utilize those raw materials. Ditto for the free range meat (cattle, goat–an increasingly popular meat, duck, chicken, pork) and types of produce grown in the area. Not to mention fish. Right now, it’s my understanding that people now ship their fish up to Seattle (& then further away)–wonder why it can’t be shipped out of Newport?
It’s not as if there isn’t a good market for prepared (including frozen) foods in the US & elsewhere. Or that there isn’t room for additional specialty goods. Maybe you have to start small–that’s what the local baker did and she’s got lines in front of her booth every Saturday.
How much better off would Newport and the county be if each local food related business could hire another 3 full time employees? Would that improve the economic status less or more or the same as the NOAA headquarters (w/possibly a smaller investment)?
I don’t know but I also don’t know that the city council or anyone else has ever even looked at the possibility. All I know is that some people in the county work very hard at increasing or enlarging the “farm to table” possibilities (w/as far as I can tell, very little interest from the city council other then letting them use a very windy space on the grounds of the former Naterlin/City Hall). What if it were also “farm to freezer and tables of the region” possibilities?
Okay… Mr Deco, what does this project have to do with the city council. THE CITY DOES NOT OWN THE BEACH OR THE OCEAN! They have absolutely nothing to do with this project.
I’m so sick and tired of people blaming the city for everything. Oh God debris is coming ashore. What’s the City/County going to do about it?? NOTHING THAT’S STATE/Federal property. Complain to the Fed’s not a small town municipality which real issues involve water/sewer problems. Have a nice day.