By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews
Building the nation’s first wave-energy testing facility just off the central Oregon coast has been a project decades in the making.
Now, engineers, researchers and ocean-wave specialists, aided by three vessels working up to 24 hours a day, this week will begin to tackle the final phase of installing the undersea cables needed to link the in-ocean testing site with a highly secure monitoring facility at Driftwood Beach State Park north of Waldport.
Work will get underway this week when the 89-foot vessel Liberty starts operating out of Newport, project officials said. Two large vessels, both measuring more than 240 feet in length and carrying critical components, are about to move through the Panama Canal and are expected to start working on PacWest’s seabed cable routes off Seal Rock around the end of the month.
The work is expected to take six to seven weeks and involves installing four power and data cables ranging in length from 10 to 13 miles from a vault under the parking lot at Driftwood Beach to the test site offshore.
On shore, mobilization of equipment at Driftwood Beach is scheduled to start Wednesday.
“We have a lot of work to do in the next few months,” Dan Hellin, deputy director of PacWave told YachatsNews. “It’s going to be very exciting to see actual devices coming in to be tested for market-readiness here. It’s an extremely exciting time.”
When completed late this year, the $100 million PacWave South project will be the first pre-permitted, utility-scale, grid-connected wave energy test site in the United States.
The project, intended to accommodate testing by as many as four wave-energy companies at any given time, is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of Oregon and other public and private utilities.
Myriad moving parts
Hellin and dozens of others associated with the project say they marvel daily at the breadth and scope of PacWave, which broke new ground in the U.S. by ordering 48 miles of specially fabricated cables needed to link the sand and sea elements of the project and assembling them all for operation on the Oregon coast.
“Companies are waiting for us right now to be up and running,” he said. “There’s so much that goes into a project like this, but once we are operational, we expect to see strong and continuing interest from people who will use our site to test their equipment.”
Four such companies, all U.S.-based, have already signed on to see how much electricity their prototypes can generate, Hellin said. International entities have also expressed interest in using PacWave to further their own ocean-based research, he added.
Manufacture of the subsea and terrestrial cables was completed in Norway. The land-side cables were shipped to Seattle and are now in storage before they will be brought to Oregon later this month for installation.
The subsea connectors – which go on the seaward end of the undersea cables – made their way recently from Norway to a port in Louisiana aboard the 450-foot freighter Frieda. The cables are being “unspooled” onto another boat, the 240-foot HOS Innovator for final shipping to Oregon.
Hurricane Beryl, which has caused extensive damage and disruption to shipping traffic in parts of Mexico and the Caribbean, has temporarily delayed the cables’ passage through the Panama Canal.
“Held up just a bit,” Hellin said. “But otherwise, everything is running according to schedule.”
Lights at night
Final installation of the power and data cables, which Hellin called the most challenging aspect of the PacWave South project, will take place both on land near Driftwood Beach State Park and in the ocean about seven miles off the coast between Waldport and Newport.
While work on the terrestrial end of the project will be limited to daytime hours, crews on the three vessels will be going round-the-clock. Lights from the respective crafts will be easily visible from shore, Hellin said.
“It will definitely be an unusual sight,” he added.
The cables will be anchored in an underground vault at Driftwood and run through conduits from the shore under the beach, then come up out of the seafloor about one mile out. From there to the test site, the cable will be buried about three feet under the seafloor.
The offshore support vessel Innovator will be used to lay the cables. The Nautilus will follow behind to bury the cable using a remotely-operated vehicle. The M/V Liberty will support diving operations during the cable installation and provide other assistance as needed.
On land, another group will be installing cables that run from the vault to a shoreside utility connection and monitoring facility on the east side of Highway 101 just south of Driftwood. Two of the three buildings at the site are nearly completed and the third will be finished in a few months.
Mariners in the area can reach the work vessels on VHF Channels 13 and 16 for more detailed information. They are also being asked to maintain a minimum of 500 yards distance from the vessels.
The parking lot at Driftwood Beach will be partially closed beginning Tuesday for construction. However, parking will remain available, as will acccess to the beach, the restrooms and the viewing platform.
Decades in the making
One person watching the final phase of the project nearing completion is Kaety Jacobson, who was years away from election as a Lincoln County commissioner when extensive planning efforts for what became PacWave first got underway.
Jacobson spent more than a decade helping Oregon Sea Grant coordinate community conversations about a wave-energy testing facility off the coast. That work began long enough ago, she said, that she was on maternity leave at the time for her eldest daughter, who turns 19 this month.
“Fair to say it’s been a long time,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think anyone at the time could have foreseen how this all worked out.”
Initial sighting locations included spots up and down the state’s coastline. Out of that process, two finalists emerged – Newport and Reedsport.
Newport won out, Jacobson said, due mainly to the “value added” aspect of Newport-based ocean-research facilities and organizations.
“A lot of the scientific community was already here,” she said. “And proximity to Portland also played a role, because that provided the easiest route for potential developers to be able to fly in and get here fairly quickly.”
Once every last bolt and electrical line is installed, it could take until sometime in 2025 to actually begin testing equipment, Hellin said. Once incoming data is analyzed on the shore side of PacWave South, any remaining electricity will be tied in directly to facilities operated by Central Lincoln Peoples Utility District.
“The amount of power generated at any one time will vary greatly,” he said. “But our license is up to 20 megawatts,” which would be enough to power a “few thousand homes.”
“Just keep in mind that we are, primarily, a testing facility,” Hellin said. “And it’s very exciting to say that we are just about ready to go.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
It’s great to see another form of generating energy is about to come into focus. I have always maintained that we would need several different types — solar/wind/geothermal — to name a few, to alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels and hopefully slow down the effects of global warming. Hats off to Oregon State for leading this effort.