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The final major pieces of the contract to build a wave energy test facility off the coast of Newport are now in place, paving the way for completion of the Oregon State University-led project.

PacWave South will be the first utility-scale, grid-connected wave energy test site in the United States. It will offer wave energy developers the opportunity to try different technologies for harnessing the power of ocean waves and transmitting that energy to the local electrical grid.

Project leaders have authorized the procurement of more than 80 kilometers of cable that will deliver wave-generated energy to a shoreside facility where it can be fed to the local electrical grid. They also finalized the contract with Corvallis-based Gerding Builders for construction of the facility. Work on the project, expected to cost more than $80 million, is expected to begin this spring, PacWave Deputy Director Dan Hellin stated in a news release.

鈥淭hese are the last two major pieces of the project,鈥� Burke Hales, PacWave’s chief scientist and an OSU professor, stated in the news release. 鈥淭he cable manufacturing and installation is the most technically challenging aspect. Authorization of the manufacturing is a huge milestone for PacWave and is critical to its success.鈥�

The ocean test site will be located on a sandy-bottomed stretch of the Pacific Ocean away from popular commercial and recreational fishing reefs about seven miles off the coast of Newport. The site will have four different test 鈥渂erths,鈥� which combined can accommodate up to 20 wave energy devices at any one time.

Power and data cables buried below the seafloor will connect the ocean test site to the shoreside facility in Seal Rock, south of Newport. Louisiana-based industrial electrical services contractor R.T. Casey is overseeing the procurement, construction and installation of the cable. The cables will be manufactured in Norway by the Paris-based Nexans, which also has facilities in the U.S. The cable manufacturing process will take about a year. The goal is for the cables to arrive in the Pacific Northwest in spring 2024 for installation that summer, Hales said. Once installed, the subsea cables will come ashore at the Driftwood Beach State Recreation Site, where they will connect to terrestrial cables in an underground vault. The terrestrial cables will connect to the shoreside facility on Northwest Wenger Lane, just off Highway 101 in Seal Rock.

The recently enacted federal omnibus appropriations legislation provides an additional $22 million to continue construction of the PacWave project. In 2022, crews completed installation of underground conduits that will house the subsea and terrestrial cables. From the shoreside facility, the wave-generated power can reach the local power grid operated by the Central Lincoln People’s Utility District. PacWave’s connection to the power grid will allow wave energy developers to test the efficacy of their devices as well as mechanisms for turning the energy they capture into a commodity with value on the energy market.

PacWave could be operational in 2025. The U.S. Department of Energy already has identified and provided funding to a slate of wave energy developers who will begin testing their devices once the facility is complete, Hales stated in the news release. PacWave is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of Oregon and other public and private entities.