Capturing the energy of ocean waves

This work proposes a concept for efficiently capturing the power of ocean waves. Many concepts have been pursued for over 100 years, but none have proven to be commercially viable for widespread operation. The waves offer a significant source of renewable energy and 60% of the world's population lives within 100 miles of a coastline. The concept proposed is designed to overcome the difficulties of destruction due to severe storms and bio fouling -the degraded operation, of precision components in a corrosive environment. The author has developed a working model, constructed of "low tech" building materials that demonstrated continuous turning of a large flywheel, moment of inertia of 250kg m/sup 2/, for over one hour. The patented concept offers a means for rapidly establishing the energy capture mechanism and keeping the critical precision components protected from the ocean environment. Building on this success, a large-scale demonstration is proposed to assess performance of a commercially viable configuration.