PG&E to buy power from proposed "wave farm"

BEIJING, Dec. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- San Francisco's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will become the first U.S. utility to agree to buy energy from a "wave farm" when it announces a deal to get 2 megawatts of power by 2012 from the waters off the Northern California coast, media reported Tuesday.

The deal, with Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company, could lead to the building of the "wave farm" about 2.5 miles off the coast of Eureka in Humboldt County.

PG&E won't build or own the proposed "wave farm" which will be designed and built by Finavera. Instead, PG&E has agreed to buy the plant's power.

The power it generates won't be much - enough to light 1,500 homes at most. But it represents another potential front in the fight against climate change. California has ordered utilities such as PG&E to buy more power from renewable sources that don't spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and heat the planet. The utilities are turning to the sun, the wind and now the ocean as a result.

Wave power has been tested again and again. But unlike the solar panels and wind farms multiplying across the country, it has remained a promising technology, not a moneymaker.

If all goes as planned, Finavera's small wave-power station off the Humboldt County coast will be the first in America to sell its power.

Neither Finavera nor PG&E will say how much the Eureka wave park will cost.

(Agencies)