The energy to make waves - part 2:  Waves Making Energy 

Back in March 2005 I delivered a short essay on the challenges facing innovators. It was a plea for disruptive technologies and for more people who are 'energised to make waves'.    In a remarkable echo of my earlier essay, a new and wonderfully apple-cart up-setting venture is now poised to make history by transforming the prospects for alternative energy generation.

The giant Harland & Wolff Shipyard in Belfast is nowadays much reduced to a ship repair and specialist fabrication facility for offshore structures. The glory days of shipbuilding may be long gone but, tucked away in a corner of this industrial wilderness, the finishing touches are being made to a new design for offshore energy - a design, however, that has far less visibility than oil rigs or wind farms.

Wavebob is aptly named. It uses the lift and fall of waves to pump giant pistons. These drive the alternators to generate electricity for delivery via cables back to the shore .

This emergent Wave Energy scene has been largely ignored by environmentalists and public policy developers. Wind farms cannot help but be noticed. Solar panels provide lean-to roofing for road-signs all over the place. But whilst, in these latitudes, the sun doesn't always shine, nor the winds always blow, the waves keep rolling in. Across 3000 North Atlantic miles they are rarely pacified.

The waves hit the edge of the continental shelf with enough energy-generation potential in Irish waters for Wavebob technology to equal the current capacity of both the grids in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

It's 'a swell idea' that really hasn't had the engineering attention given to tidal, hydro, or other alternatives to fossil and nuclear fuels. It's been tried before, of course, with limited success, but the new design promises to be more efficient, cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and environmentally less intrusive. It might even provide new habitats for a growing diversity of fish species sheltered from the predations of giant trawlers.

A major part of the innovative endeavour lies in the control mechanism where the challenge is to cope with variability from mild swells to raging storms. As any offshore sailor can testify, there is often an excess of wave energy on the 'romantic' West coast of Ireland. These structures must be able to absorb anything that Mother Nature can summon - and that's why the Harland & Wolff engineering skills, honed in earlier decades of North Sea exploration, are getting a new lease of life.

The structures are controlled by a damping system that can respond to predicted wave height, wave power and frequency. The system adds or subtracts buoyancy to smooth out the variable insults hurled at it by the Atlantic.

And (whisper this quietly in the birthplace of the Titanic) like icebergs, the parts that are visible above the surface are but nothing to the structures dangling below - but, unlike floating icebergs, the Wavebob generators are moored to the sea bed and not adrift causing mayhem and despair.

In a further echo of my earlier essay, the entire venture is remarkably collaborative - bringing together and leveraging international innovative endeavours. It's the sort of thing we now routinely expect at the Northern Ireland Science Park where all manner of creative ideas can feed off each other.

No surprise then that Wavebob has gained a starring role in a cartoon animation project - a new series of science-based entertainment programmes for children soon to be distributed around the world via a network of Planetariums.

And no surprise either that in the industrial wilderness of the old dockyards, the creators of Wavebob are fully connected to the Internet and their computer-aided design systems by a mobile broadband service (HC-SDMA) that is also at the cutting edge of global technology. The time saved by being so well-connected is helping to keep the build programme on track ahead of delivery to the test site in Galway Bay next month.

The popular image of the innovator is the lone genius, locked away in some monastic cell wrestling with his intellect - single-mindedly pursuing a revolutionary dream - while the rest of the world rolls on regardless.

As Trevor Baylis. the acclaimed inventor of the wind-up radio, often remarks, 'We do not teach innovation in this country and our school children know nothing about safeguarding Intellectual Property'. The young students of today would, no doubt, be amazed to discover that they too have the power to make waves - and, with the Collaborative Advantage of this networked world, they most definitely do not need permission to innovate.

Notes for editors:

Wavebob is a registered trademark and property of Wavebob Limited.

HC-SDMA is an ANSI Standard and is synonymous with the commercial system iBurst. iBurst is a registered trade mark and property of ArrayComm Inc. www.groupe-intellex.com/HCSDMA.htm

TxT - Trouble Times Two - is a film animation series designed and developed by Rogue Rocket Ltd and Groupe Intellex. www.williamsimpsonsite.com/5.html

Trevor Baylis - http://www.baylisbrands.com/

The author, David Brunnen, is Managing Director of Groupe Intellex - a consultancy specialising in 'disruptive technologies'