In LA port, bobbing blue floats are turning wave power into clean energy

LOS ANGELES -- On a recent sunny morning in a channel at the Port of Los Angeles, seven blue steel structures that look like small boats are lowered into the ocean one by one. Attached to an unused wharf on a site that once housed oil tanks, they gently bob up and down with the waves to generate renewable power. Nearby, a sea lion peeks from the water and pelicans and sea gulls soar overhead.

This is the nation’s first onshore wave energy site, and on Tuesday, Eco Wave Power will officially unveil the pilot installation and begin operating. The pilot will generate just a small amount of electricity that can be used locally, but the larger goal is to prove the technology works well enough to expand along 8 miles of breakwater at the port — enough to power up to 60,000 homes.

Co-founder and CEO Inna Braverman said that much power could be a “game changer in terms of clean energy production” for the port and the communities around it. America’s shipping ports have long struggled with dirty air that harms the health of people living nearby.

“We’re starting here in LA, but we hope, aspire and believe that we will be in the United States and in other locations around the world,” she said, standing outside a blue shipping container serving as the project’s power station.

Wave energy is an emerging industry that’s largely still focused on research, demonstration and pilot projects. But the potential is big.

Waves off the coasts of the United States generate enough power to meet roughly one-third of America’s energy needs, according to Department of Energy estimates. Even if only a portion is harnessed, wave energy technologies could help meet the growing demand for electricity being driven in large part by the artificial intelligence race. Wave energy could also complement wind and solar to stabilize the electric grid.

Eco Wave Power installed its technology at the port’s AltaSea ocean institute, a nonprofit that is working in part to advance ocean-based solutions to climate change. Half this pilot project was funded by the oil and gas company Shell.

“It’s the first U.S. project on breakwater, so it opens up the possibility to do that on multiple other ports in the U.S.,” said Rémi Gruet, CEO of the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. “It’s a moment where wave power is starting to turn from innovation projects to actual pilot projects that go toward industrialization and commercialization.”

A key advantage for wave energy is it produces electricity at different times than wind and solar, Gruet said. For example, when the wind stops blowing, wind turbines will stop generating electricity. But waves will carry on for hours and electricity can still be generated that way, he said.

But the cost needs to come down with the help of subsidies, like it has for solar and wind, Gruet added.

The first commercial wave power plant in Europe started operating in 2011 from a breakwater at Mutriku harbor in Spain. An offshore wave energy system came online off the coast of Hawaii in 2016.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2023 to promote wave energy development in the state. Eco Wave Power currently has a two-year license to operate the pilot station at the Port of Los Angeles.

As the small blue floats bob up and down, each pushes a cylinder that sends a biodegradable hydraulic fluid through a system of pipes into storage tanks. Pressure in the tanks builds up. That pressure turns a motor, which turns a generator, producing clean electricity.

“The world has waves, 70% percent of the world is covered by ocean,” Terry Tamminen, president and CEO of AltaSea and former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said at the site of the project.

“And we can harness all of that clean energy now, thanks to things like Eco Wave,” he said.

Braverman said there are dozens of sites along the U.S. coastline, identified through a study paid for by Shell, where her company could harness wave energy to add clean electricity to the grid. She said the technology is easy to adopt because unlike other renewables, this system doesn’t require any land acquisition, it involves repurposing existing structures rather than altering coastlines and it can generate electricity around the clock.

The Eco Wave pilot did require licensing from the Army Corps of Engineers and from the port, but that came in a relatively quick two years, Braverman said.

Eco Wave Power is also working on projects abroad, including Taiwan, India and Portugal, and operating a grid-connected project in Israel. In New Jersey, where legislation is advancing to promote ocean energy development in the state, the company is looking for a site to install a pilot project, with help from elected officials.

Andrea Copping, an expert in marine renewable energy development, thinks Eco Wave Power’s technology can be scaled up successfully. These small marine energy projects are not yet economically competitive with solar or wind, but there are places where they may be a better fit or a solution in cooperation with other energy sources, such as remote coastal communities and islands where diesel deliveries can be very expensive, she said.

“We consider every successful deployment an important milestone in creating this industry,” said Copping, a distinguished faculty fellow in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.

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McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.

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