HISTORY OF TIDAL AND WAVE ENERGY
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HISTORICAL OCEAN POWER
Knowledge Meets Curiosity For Tidal Power
The use of tidal and wave energy has been in use for a long time. Some of the earliest examples can be found in Europe where early "tide mills" can be dated back to as early as 1170. These original tide mills work much like the concepts of today with the only difference being that they did not generate electricity in 1170. The mill at Suffolk as seen above is a good example of how the concept worked. Basically, a dam was built to contain the tide when it was high. Once the tide fell, the contained water was directed into a sluice where it pushed a wood water wheel that was then used to turn machinery of varying sorts (mostly stones for grinding grain). The concept today is basically the same except that the water wheel is replaced with a steel turbine and rather than turn stones to grind grain, the turbine spins a generator to produce electricity. By the 18th century, 76 tide mills were being used in London alone. At one time there were about 750 tide mills in operation around the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. This included about 300 on North American shores, about 200 in the British Isles, and about 100 in France. In the early 19th  century an engineer by the name of Dexter Cooper came up with the idea of creating power from tides, a plan that he intended to implement in Cobscook and Passamaquoddy bays. Early funding was robust, the stock market crash of 1929 quickly put an end to work.
EARLY WAVE ENERGY
In 1799, the first patent for using ocean waves as an energy resource was filed by Girard and his sons from France.
In 1910 a crude device that used ocean waves provided power to the house of Bochaux-Praceique at Royan, Bordeax in France. Many researchers and inventors in the UK have been trying to harness the power of ocean waves, but unfortunately, there really wasn’t a concerted effort to develop this technology. It was only during the oil crisis in 1973 that researchers took a closer look into developing ocean and sea wave energy devices. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Norwegian Institute of Technology, US Naval Academy, Bristol University, University of Lancaster, and MIT joined forces and developed the Edinburgh Duck, a device that could harness the power of ocean waves and convert it into energy. The future of wave power seemed to be improving, but when the oil crisis was over in the 1980’s, the world turned its back again on developing wave power. It was only during the late 1900’s did interest in developing wave power renew. In 1991, the Islay Limpet, a 500 KW oscillating water column device was installed along a portion of the shoreline in Scotland. In 1994, Finland announced that they had installed the Waveroller. Energy was produced by installing a plate that was anchored at the sea bottom. Waves moved the upper portion of the plate back and forth and the kinetic energy was collected by a piston pump. In 1997, Ocean Power Technologies in the United States developed the Powerbouy. The up and down movements of a wave caused hydraulic fluid within a bouy to spin a generator thereby producing energy.
