Federal lease allows Oregon State’s offshore wave energy testing facility to move ahead in 2021

An Oregon State University-led project to build the nation’s first pre-permitted wave energy testing facility cleared a critical hurdle as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management awarded the university a lease to operate in federal waters about seven miles off the Oregon Coast.

The lease for PacWave South is the first marine renewable energy research lease the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued in federal waters off the West Coast. The estimated US$80 million facility will be located offshore southwest of Newport, Oregon.

The project still must receive licensing approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before it can move forward. Obtaining the lease is an essential component of the licensing requirements.

PacWave South will be the first pre-permitted, full-scale, utility grid-connected wave energy test site in the United States. It is designed to allow wave energy developers the opportunity to test different technologies for harnessing the energy of ocean waves.

The PacWave ocean test site will be located about seven miles offshore on a sandy-bottomed stretch of the Pacific Ocean away from popular commercial and recreational fishing reefs. The ocean site will have four different testings “berths,” which combined can accommodate up to 20 total wave energy devices at any one time. Five power and data cables buried below the seafloor will connect the ocean test site to a shoreside facility southeast of Seal Rock.