Milton Financials: Tidal energy could supply up to 10% of U.S. electricity requirements.

Nov. 24, 2010 - PRLog -- While advocates of renewable energy agree that widespread use of tidal energy may still be some years away they emphasize that tides and other hydrokinetic systems including ocean waves and free flowing rivers could, in the not too distant future, be providing even more electricity than what hydro-electric projects currently generate.

In October, Milton Financials sources report, alternative energy firm Ocean Power Technologies linked a test buoy in the swells off Hawaii’s third largest island to a power grid which services the U.S. marine base on the island, taking the first step for wave energy in U.S. waters.

"We have demonstrated that our technology works, that it can survive in harsh ocean conditions and can deliver high-quality power to the grid," Robert Lurie, a vice president of New Jersey-based Ocean Power told Milton Financials sources.

Ocean Power intends to deploy a bigger power-generating buoy in the waves off of the Oregon shore in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. in 2011.

According to Lurie, the firm ultimately aims to build “multi-buoy wave farms” capable of generating sufficient energy to power 50,000 homes.
Currently numerous tidal power projects and studies are being conducted in Hawaii, Washington, Alaska, Florida, California, Oregon and Maine, in New York City’s East River , along the Mississippi River and elsewhere.

"These are coastal resources, and most people live along the coasts," a source at the U.S. Energy Department, told Milton Financials. "When you're talking about providing half the power of Alaska or Hawaii, or half the power of New York, that's significant."

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