Originally published February 4 2006
NASA engineer invents device to convert seawater to electricity
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Tom Woodbridge, a NASA engineer, explains how his invention, the Ocean Swell and Wave Energy Conversion system, could change the world by providing cheap, clean electricity generated from ocean water.
Now, a generation later with a new energy crisis, the son of that rocket scientist thinks he is close to perfecting that spare-part dream: a machine that might make cheap, clean electricity from the ocean.
The renewed interest in finding cheap, plentiful and renewable energy has rekindled interest in the work of Woodbridge and others.
He knows about 20 other companies trying to get energy from the sea.
Alternative energy is in the forefront again as high fuel costs, after Hurricane Katrina, wreak havoc on the nation's oil refineries and Americans' wallets.
Almost any eighth-grader can tell you that spinning copper wires through a stable magnetic field makes electricity _ lots of electrons jumping off the magnetic field and zooming through a conductive metal.
But the sea is a very hostile environment," said professor Elias K. "Lee" Stefanakos, director of the University of South Florida's Clean Energy Research Center in Tampa.
But after tinkering with the idea off and on for years, Tom Woodbridge is making a final push toward making his father's dream a reality.
He has six U.S. and international patents, a $30,000 grant from the state's Technological Research and Development Authority and prototypes that take up most of the family garage in Satellite Beach.
His father's idea, to use the rocking motion of the waves to generate electricity, came from looking at his son's Slinky toy back in 1972.
Woodbridge says he needs about $550,000 for 18 months of development for three ocean-trial models, and he expects it will cost $4.2 million to complete through production.
Stefanakos says he is glad people are looking for alternatives to fossil fuels such as oil, but he's cautious about getting electricity from the sea.
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