I'm not so sure... it depends on the price we are willing to pay.

King Island is apparently getting these gizmo's (technical word there ;-) rigged up to their wind generators to cut the cost of diesel backup. I heard on BZE that this was pretty much going to make their wind baseload, but haven't heard any recent news on actual deployment or cost.

http://www.lloydenergy.com/heatstorage.htm

Maybe what's economically feasible on an island strapped for energy is not cost competitive on the mainland, but it is a start.

renewable energy?...green, clean inexhaustable?...easy man easy...nothing to it...it is as simply as looking in a mirror...

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Hasbeen, got a link on that failed wavepower story because I BET you it's not CETO. There are hundreds of varieties of wave power jiggers being trialled around the globe, but CETO beats them all because it was designed by an ex oil man who understands marine environments and industrial scale toughness, and water pressure.

The doovers and jiggers bobbing up and down at sea trying to generate power there to be transmitted back into the land seem to me to be fundamentally flawed. Turbines like to spin around, be big, and not limited to tiny jiggers trying to generate power bobbing up and down.

So CETO takes the simple up and down pumping action of the waves and turns it NOT into electricity but mechanical pumping. Up... DOWN, pump. The seawater is pumped up onto the land where it is combined with all the other hoses, and the high pressure water pushes a turbine. It works whether the waves are large or barely noticable... the circular action of these pumps is very efficient.

Also, rather than sitting on top of the waves visually polluting an area and interrupting shipping lanes, these things are underwater.

They are totally different technologies.

So... was your failed Spanish project an attempt to use small turbines out at sea trying to adapt to an up and down jigger? Or were they industrial strength pumps using the up and down motion of waves to pump water into land, with NO expensive electrical wiring out at sea, and just relying on high water pressure to drive one whopping great turbine on the land?