One of the fun parts of working at Google that anyone can participate in is that we have alot of fun speakers talk on alot of fun topics. Last November, a company creating a machine to capture energy from Ocean Waves came to talk at Google. They have a snakelike machine that rides right on top of the waves far into the ocean, so that they are practically invisible. Waves are created by wind over large distances, wind is created by sun over large distances, so ultimately waves are an effective solar power source. Turns out that collecting this solar energy from the waves is alot easier (cheaper) than directly from the sun. Wave energy has the potential to generate up to 2,000TWh/year or enough to offset 2 billion tonnes of CO2. Check out the video below:
Around 26:00 on the 1 hour video, they show a video of the machine in action (admittedly a smaller-scale version in the lab). These guys (Ocean Power Delivery) are really serious too, they have gotten their machine industrially verified for survivability, and have actually built one of them in the UK with existing contracts to build 3MW of power. Cool stuff.
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