Wave Energy Company Quietly Takes Its Technology to Australia

A wave energy buoy floats at the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center test site

A New Jersey-based company that received $8.7 million in federal grants to develop a buoy to capture wave energy off the Oregon coast has quietly abandoned the project, the New York Times reported today.

Ocean Power Technologies has taken its technology to Australia where the government will give them $62 million to continue its research.

The company was developing the nation's first commercial wave parks near Reedsport and Coos Bay. The project would have supplied power to 1,000 homes with 10 buoys, each the size of a blue whale. Instead the first buoy was completed two years ago and sits untested at the Port of Portland.

Ocean Power Technologies received the nation's first commercial license to produce energy-capturing buoys. 

The Times reports on what this means for Oregon:

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