Last post I wrote about a buoy produced by Ocean Power Technologies, a device that produces electrical energy from the vertical movement of the waves. Well, one of the places that they’ve implemented this innovative system is in Santoña, Cantabria.
Santoña is a village of twelve thousand inhabitants that is fifty kilometers away from Santader, the capital of Cantabria. This is where Iberdrola Renovables decided to make the investment to implement OPT’s Power buoy.
The project started in July 2006, when OPT formed a joint venture with Iberdrola and other institutions. But it wasn’t until October 2008 that the first buoy was installed.
They installed the PB40, a buoy that produces 40kW. The plan is to install another 9 buoys, but PB150s, that produce up to 150 kW. Therefore, the total energy that the plant would produce would be nearly 1,5 MW. Once the whole wave farm is completed, it will produce enough energy to supply 2.500 households.
This farm is 4 km off the shore, so it has no visual impact what so ever. But being so far away is a problem for the engineers: they have to install cables to be able to bring the energy to the electricity on to the mainland. This is still to be done, so this project is long from still being finished…
