Santa Fe company aims to turn motion of waves into electricity

A Santa Fe company plans to turn ocean waves into electricity off Peru’s coast in the spring.

Atmocean is run by Philip Kithil, an entrepreneur and inventor. Chris White, a native Santa Fean, works as the project administrator, and both understand the ocean and waves better than most landlocked New Mexicans.

“There are a lot of exciting advantages here versus traditional methods of energy production,” White said.

It’s a dry Wednesday, and there’s no water in sight at the CoLAB, 1807 Second St., where the duo rents desk space. Most of the design and marketing work takes place in Santa Fe, the manufacturing of prototypes is done in Albuquerque, and the testing takes place in locales such as the Gulf of Mexico and Oregon.

Wave energy is a simple concept but hard in practice. The idea is to harness the kinetic motion produced by the ceaseless motion of waves. Kithil’s system uses a set of buoys that convert wave energy into pressured water, which then powers a set of turbines.

It’s a growing global movement. The Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center run by Oregon State University and the University of Washington is dedicated to studying and promoting marine energy. Similar programs exist worldwide.

As for Peru, Kithil said the site selection occurred with little leg work. A manufacturing company in Peru had seen an article about Atmocean and asked him to bring his system to South America.

A few trips to Peru later, Kithil and White secured a manufacturing deal. They’ll start building the first array in spring 2015 barring major setbacks.

Kithil moved to Santa Fe in 1972. He didn’t study wave energy or work in a marine-related field. He ran an outdoor clothing company in the early-’70s to the mid-’80s, then sold that businesses.

Kithil then designed automotive safety components from the mid-’80s to mid-2000s. His daughter inspired that transition, he said. It was 1984, and Kithil said that his daughter was driving to Santa Fe High. That’s when another driver rear-ended her vehicle. She survived — the vehicle not so much — but that accident ignited his interest in automotive safety.

In a similar manner, Kithil said he first conceived of his buoy-and-pump system after witnessing the havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

He developed a pump that would transfer cooler water near the ocean floor to the surface. He said reducing the water’s surface temperature could dampen a hurricane’s power as it headed inland. Kithil said he fashioned and tested a successful prototype, but he found no market for his creation.

Kithil next planned to sell the pumps as a carbon-offset measure. That effort stuttered, too. Eventually, Kithil and White decided to market the pumps as electricity producers.

The rigs are made up of a buoy, pump and an anchor. The buoys are 10 feet wide and made of fiberglass and foam. A metal pump and a piston are attached underneath the buoy, and a set of anchors shaped like fins helps secure the rig. The buoys are large — the pump and anchors are each 10 feet tall — but the two said their design is one of the smaller ones in the wave-energy industry.

Many wave-energy systems require seafloor transmission cables to transfer the energy produced by the buoys to shore. Kithil’s system does not, which means the array, he said, is easier to install and maintain.

The ocean waves carry the large buoy up and down continuously, and that motion powers the intake and the pumping of water. The pressurized water then travels through an auxiliary tube to a mainline that leads back to the coast. There the water spins a turbine, then is shot back out to the ocean. Kithil’s design calls for an array made of rigs in a 3-by-5 grid. And each array is tethered about a mile offshore.

Ideally, the array will produce about 2.1 million kilowatt-hours per year. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average American home in 2012 consumed 10,837 kwh annually.

White studied marine biology in college, and recently he earned his master’s degree in oceanography and limnology from University of Amsterdam. He said the impact of the buoy system on the environment would be minimal. White plans to relocate to Peru when the company launches the first test array.

“You’re seeing our ability to generate power coming at a great cost, specifically our entire environment,” White said. “When you find a solution where you’re actually able to create energy in an inert way, it’s really exciting.”

Kithil and White said they will start a crowdfunding campaign for Atmocean on Sept. 14 on Indiegogo.com. You can learn more about Atmocean at atmocean.wordpress.com.

Contact Chris Quintana at 986-3093 or cquintana@sfnew mexican.com. Follow him on Twitter at @CquintanaSF.