Speaker 1: Pushkin. Solar power and wind power are amazing, but and
Speaker 1: we talked about this recently on the show, they have
Speaker 1: this major flaw. They're intermittent. The sun doesn't always shine,
Speaker 1: the wind doesn't always blow. This is a fact you
Speaker 1: might reflect on as you are gazing out at some
Speaker 1: majestic vista, maybe you're on a bluff overlooking the sea,
Speaker 1: and then you notice something. The waves they never stop.
Speaker 1: They may be bigger or smaller, but they're always there.
Speaker 1: If only there were some way to capture the energy
Speaker 1: that is right there in those waves. This is not
Speaker 1: a new idea. People have wanted to do this for
Speaker 1: literally hundreds of years. Unfortunately, though, it's not as easy
Speaker 1: as it sounds. There are a lot of problems to solve.
Speaker 1: But sometime, probably in the next few weeks, a tugboat
Speaker 1: will pull a yellow, thirty foot long wave energy converter
Speaker 1: out of Honolulu Harbor and around to a mooring on
Speaker 1: the north shore of Oahu. They're a crew of engineers
Speaker 1: will basically plug this thing into a cable on the
Speaker 1: ocean floor, and if everything goes according to plan, it
Speaker 1: will start producing electricity. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is
Speaker 1: what's your problem. My guest today is Tim Munden, chief
Speaker 1: technology officer at Oscilla Power. Tim's problem is this, how
Speaker 1: do you turn the waves in the ocean into electrical power.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things to me about your field
Speaker 1: is it seems really hard, right. I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: this period, the twenty or so year as you've been
Speaker 1: in the field, it seems like wave powers has been
Speaker 1: like one challenge after another. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is me not knowing much about it, but well,
Speaker 1: you know that's true. But it's not just since I've
Speaker 1: been in the field. It's been a lot longer than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first pattern on wave energy is was
Speaker 1: filed in I think seventeen ninety nine, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. Really Yeah. I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: challenge comes from the fact that when you look into
Speaker 1: the ocean, you think, well, that's pretty straightforward. The waves
Speaker 1: just move up and down. We can just put something
Speaker 1: on it to be able to harness that energy, and
Speaker 1: you can all that energy is right there, you can
Speaker 1: see it where the water moves up and down. Right,
Speaker 1: But there are fundamental challenges that make that. We found
Speaker 1: that mean that that's not quite so straightforward. You know,
Speaker 1: you could create this long list, but in essence, there's
Speaker 1: a massive amount of energy in a relatively small space.
Speaker 1: It's the power density, and because it's so high and
Speaker 1: much higher than wind or solar, that it has a
Speaker 1: tendency to break things. And so you're not only to
Speaker 1: have to have something that's think efficient, but you also
Speaker 1: have to have some thing that's strong, and oftentimes those
Speaker 1: are in conflict with each other. Interesting, so if you
Speaker 1: build something that's tough enough to float out there in
Speaker 1: the waves and survive, it's not as good as capturing
Speaker 1: the energy and vice versa. Well, yeah, that's precisely correct.
Speaker 1: And so is there an underlying problem there that's a
Speaker 1: problem for anybody trying to turn ocean waves into electrical power,
Speaker 1: which is that the ocean moves in all different directions.
Speaker 1: It moves in threedom, up and down and side to side,
Speaker 1: and that's way more complicated than like having a windmill
Speaker 1: and the wind blows into it and it turns like,
Speaker 1: is that a starting problem is that the motion is
Speaker 1: in kind of all different directions in the ocean. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, it's more than that as well, And
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we can kind of simplify it in many ways.
Speaker 1: It's it is that energy doesn't flow in a linear fashion.
Speaker 1: It moves in a very different way. It actually moves
Speaker 1: in the particles. Ocean particles move in circles, so you
Speaker 1: don't have this linear flow particles like you would in wind.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's the first big problem. The second
Speaker 1: big problem as well is you know it's much denser,
Speaker 1: and so you have this you know, you have to
Speaker 1: manage that that high power density as well, and it
Speaker 1: also high variability as well. On a very short time frame. Now,
Speaker 1: over longer time periods, waves are extremely consistent, you know,
Speaker 1: we have it's much more consistent than wind or solar.
Speaker 1: But over the course of a few seconds, you know,
Speaker 1: waves change quite a lot and you have to factor
Speaker 1: all of that into that capture part of the system. So,
Speaker 1: I know, you have these two different sort of models,
Speaker 1: these two different wave power generators. You're working on ones
Speaker 1: called the traiton. See it's a big one in a
Speaker 1: little one. It's the little one that's that's further along.
Speaker 1: That's the one in Honolulu right now, When exactly is
Speaker 1: that one going to be installed, going to be turned on?
Speaker 1: It's a really good question. We're currently waiting for. Were
Speaker 1: the windows. The site that we're using is it's a
Speaker 1: it's an energetic site, so the waves are big, which
Speaker 1: mean that it can sometimes be challenging for the sort
Speaker 1: of construction operations that need to go in order to
Speaker 1: make the site ready. And so we're waiting for the
Speaker 1: right window to be able to take that system around
Speaker 1: around Hawaii from Honolulu to Knahowe, which is on the
Speaker 1: north side of the island. So is that like next
Speaker 1: few weeks, next few months. Honestly, we're hoping that it
Speaker 1: is in the next few weeks. So let's talk. I
Speaker 1: know this is a smaller one and will that be
Speaker 1: the first real world, you know, out there generating power
Speaker 1: thing for you guys, for us, that's right, that'll be
Speaker 1: our first commercial type unit that will be plugged into
Speaker 1: the grid and generating power. We've done other ocean deployments
Speaker 1: before this point in order to be able to demonstrate
Speaker 1: elements of the technology. We've previously deployed out in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and done ocean deployments there where we've been able
Speaker 1: to look at specific elements and prove that they work.
Speaker 1: But this will be the first integrated complete system connected
Speaker 1: to the grid. So let's talk about the device. The
Speaker 1: Traton is the little one that traton, see is the
Speaker 1: big one that traiton see sorry, the little one is
Speaker 1: the Triton. See. It's really innovatively named for the sea
Speaker 1: to stand for community. Yeah, we could, we could, we
Speaker 1: could have come up with something a little bit more exciting,
Speaker 1: but no, Triton is the name of the larger system.
Speaker 1: Triton is good. Trayton is very exciting. I think staying
Speaker 1: with that is smart. So this thing that is sitting
Speaker 1: there in Honolulu right now, that's about to get towed
Speaker 1: out and plugged in, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: tell me just what does it look like? How big
Speaker 1: is it? Of course, so that the Triton architecture, which
Speaker 1: all of our systems follow, comprises a floating object on
Speaker 1: the surface, a hole. Hanging beneath that hole is a
Speaker 1: ring that stays very still while the surface float is
Speaker 1: being moved by waves, and then those the relative motion
Speaker 1: of those two bodies is what generates power. So there's
Speaker 1: there's the piece that floats on the surface. The ones
Speaker 1: I've seen in pictures are yellow, just to help picture
Speaker 1: it right. And that's floating there on the surface, and
Speaker 1: there are a few was it three or four cables
Speaker 1: going down from the surface connecting to this ring that
Speaker 1: is suspended under the water below the floating part of
Speaker 1: the trayton, Right, that's correct. And because there are three
Speaker 1: lines that connect the float to the ring, all the
Speaker 1: motions that the that the waves move the float with
Speaker 1: translate into relative motion and that's what generates power. So
Speaker 1: let's talk that through a little bit. So you've got
Speaker 1: the three lines connecting the ring under the water to
Speaker 1: the thing floating, and what you're saying is when the
Speaker 1: when everything is floating side to side or kind of
Speaker 1: back and forth, that's all generating power. Right, So how
Speaker 1: does that work? What's actually happening? So what you say
Speaker 1: is absolutely correct. So all of that generates relative motion
Speaker 1: between the two bodies. So in the trayton ce that
Speaker 1: causes a drum to rotate that trum, that rotation of
Speaker 1: that drum turns a generator. It's quite straightforward. And that's
Speaker 1: all inside. That's all inside the thing that's floating on
Speaker 1: the surface. That's correct. The drum and the generator, that's
Speaker 1: all inside the floating thing. Yeah, that's right. So it all.
Speaker 1: It all happens inside there. There's a obviously there's power electronics,
Speaker 1: and there's electrical power systems that allow us to take
Speaker 1: that power and move it outside of the float. And
Speaker 1: there's just a cable that what runs under the ocean
Speaker 1: sea floor something. There's a line running from the from
Speaker 1: the triton to the floor to a cable. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: basically it's almost as simple as that. Slightly slightly more involved,
Speaker 1: but not much more. Honestly, you would have it. It's
Speaker 1: actually no different than what would be done for off
Speaker 1: your wind project. They lay cables along the sea floor,
Speaker 1: they have an interconnection point, and then there's a cable
Speaker 1: that goes from our device down to the sea floor
Speaker 1: to connect into it. It's pretty straightforward. It's been done
Speaker 1: for many years. And so the triton, see the smaller
Speaker 1: one that's about to be deployed. How big is it?
Speaker 1: How big is the part that floats on the surface.
Speaker 1: It's ten meters long, which I think is about thirty feet.
Speaker 1: There are thirty plus fe okay, so pretty big, not
Speaker 1: that little. Yeah, and there's there's there's obviously space inside
Speaker 1: for all of the equipment, plus engineers themselves, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: any access would be for maintenance. So this thing is
Speaker 1: there in Honolulu Harbor sort of any data. It sort
Speaker 1: of reminds me of like a rocket launch, right when
Speaker 1: they when they got the rocket ready to launch, and
Speaker 1: they're just waiting for everything to come into line right leg,
Speaker 1: and they put it off and they wait and then
Speaker 1: they do it. So this thing that's going to happen
Speaker 1: any day, a ship is going to tow the trade
Speaker 1: and see out to see and hook it up. Basically,
Speaker 1: literally all that is needed is that tugboat will come
Speaker 1: hook up to the system, it will tow it to
Speaker 1: the site, we'll attach the moorings, and then it will
Speaker 1: be ready to go. It really just it's quite straightforward,
Speaker 1: but it is obviously requires certain CEA states. It couldn't
Speaker 1: go out in the highest waves because when you're towing something,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want you any enormous storm to be breaking
Speaker 1: those toe lines and things like that, so there is
Speaker 1: a particular limit to that installation. Is there already a
Speaker 1: power line you know on the sea floor there? How
Speaker 1: does that piece of it work? Yeah, that's right. That's
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons why we're going here is
Speaker 1: because This is what's called the Wave Energy Test site. Again,
Speaker 1: it's another really interesting acronym. You know, WETS is what
Speaker 1: it's known as. And here is a good acronym. Here
Speaker 1: is a good acronym for a testing way. And there
Speaker 1: are other test sites as well, but for the moment,
Speaker 1: this is the main one in the US. So they
Speaker 1: already have a subseat cable. They have three berths, and
Speaker 1: so we're going into one that's thirty meters of water depth.
Speaker 1: And yes, it has a submarine cable coming out to it.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that the device, the tread and
Speaker 1: c will start generating power immediately. Tow it out, that's correct,
Speaker 1: plug it in, turn it on like a like a lamp. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually it is as simple as that. In a minute,
Speaker 1: how do we get from plugging in a prototype in
Speaker 1: Hawaii to wave generated power at scale? That's the end
Speaker 1: of the ads. Now we're going back to the show.
Speaker 1: Given that you're just now, you know, out in the
Speaker 1: real ocean for the first time. The thing I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: given this conversation is like, oh, how how long is
Speaker 1: it going to last? How often is it going to break? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: These seem like super hard things you're just going to
Speaker 1: have to figure out by having your by having your
Speaker 1: products out in the ocean and having a break and
Speaker 1: understanding how they break and how to make them break less.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly right. We can only do so much,
Speaker 1: and yes, the whole point in testing is to be
Speaker 1: able to evaluate it. The ocean is an extremely harsh environment,
Speaker 1: you know. The sea water itself is you know, terrible
Speaker 1: on metal components, and we're trying to look at minimizing
Speaker 1: that there's fouling, which is there. There's all these lists
Speaker 1: of challenges that we spent a lot of time trying
Speaker 1: to mit to to this point, but we won't really
Speaker 1: know the impact unless we can take some solid, long
Speaker 1: duration time in the water, and that's where we're at
Speaker 1: right now. That being said, there is an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of experience within just companies in the marine space that
Speaker 1: have solved these challenges before. So half of the battle
Speaker 1: is finding out what the challenge is and then we
Speaker 1: can kind of reach out to these people to solve it.
Speaker 1: As we figure out what's going to break and then
Speaker 1: figure out who's fixed similar problems in the past, figure
Speaker 1: out how this sex. Yeah, and you mentioned that it's
Speaker 1: at a test site. Is the sole purpose of this
Speaker 1: just to see if it works or does it have
Speaker 1: some additional function besides the sort of research piece. So
Speaker 1: we have hopes for what we can do with it
Speaker 1: after we complete this testing, although that's still to be determined,
Speaker 1: and so we're going to be testing it, checking everything
Speaker 1: is exactly as we intend it to be, and then
Speaker 1: once that testing is complete, the intent or the hope
Speaker 1: is to bring it back to Washington State where we
Speaker 1: can have it generate power to a native or tribal community,
Speaker 1: ideally somewhere in Washington. Is there any particular reason that
Speaker 1: a native or tribal community is the optimal use case. Well,
Speaker 1: the Triton Sea itself is intended for one of two
Speaker 1: different markets. The community remote isolated communities, and in many
Speaker 1: cases these tribal communities are very isolated, they don't have
Speaker 1: good energy security, so this is an ideal solution for
Speaker 1: those that are on the coast. There is also the
Speaker 1: possibility for power at sea applications where you can provide
Speaker 1: power remote locations, very remote at sea locations where there
Speaker 1: are no other sources of power, so it might be
Speaker 1: a substitute for like places where the power goes off
Speaker 1: and people use gas generators regularly. Like it's sort of
Speaker 1: like instead of having to use the gas generator, you
Speaker 1: can use ther and see, is it something like that?
Speaker 1: Is it that kind of am I think of the
Speaker 1: right scale? If I'm thinking that way, you are think
Speaker 1: thinking about it in the right way, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that in many remote communities, getting fuel to these
Speaker 1: communities is absolutely critical. Yeah, you know, they can't always
Speaker 1: you know, you could be on an island somewhere, they
Speaker 1: could be you know, in remote Alaska. You know, just
Speaker 1: the cost of fuel transport is an order of magnitude
Speaker 1: more than the cost of the fuel itself, and so
Speaker 1: the actual cost of power generation in those places is
Speaker 1: exceptionally high. And it's also a very inefficient way to
Speaker 1: get power, right, burning fuel and a fuel generator is
Speaker 1: it's costly, and it's has a big carbon footprint, right,
Speaker 1: it has a big carbon footprint. That's correct for us.
Speaker 1: The goal here is is really doing that at a
Speaker 1: large scale. So you know, these small communities can be
Speaker 1: a real can benefit quite a lot from this technology,
Speaker 1: but we can all benefit a lot from being able
Speaker 1: to scale this up to multi mega systems. When you
Speaker 1: think kind of looking out further into the future, about
Speaker 1: getting from where you are now to having tritans, you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand full scale tritans floating in the ocean, generating
Speaker 1: real power, you know, at real scale. Like I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a million things you have to figure out, But
Speaker 1: are there a few big, big questions, big problems in
Speaker 1: your head of things you have to solve to get
Speaker 1: from here to there? Not as many as you might think.
Speaker 1: One of our biggest challenges is that the manufacturing scale up.
Speaker 1: But much of the technology is resolved at this point.
Speaker 1: You know, we have an architecture that works, We have
Speaker 1: a system designed that works, and one of the key
Speaker 1: things with our approach is that it's scalable. We have
Speaker 1: one system that generates one megawat, you therefore have two
Speaker 1: systems they generate two megawords, and then you just you
Speaker 1: literally just keep adding it. And there are a few
Speaker 1: other companies doing what you're doing right at these government sites.
Speaker 1: As you said, there a few different berths. When you're
Speaker 1: when you're tray and see gets towed out in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: will there be other companies devices products floating out there
Speaker 1: next to it. Probably not, but we do have other competitors,
Speaker 1: colleagues really because we're all in the space together who
Speaker 1: are also working on the problem. At this point. The
Speaker 1: other company that will be going out at a similar
Speaker 1: time is a company called Seapower, And there's also another
Speaker 1: US company that did a deployment who are at a
Speaker 1: maybe slightly earlier stage called cal Wave that are based
Speaker 1: down in California. And we're all working together, but we're
Speaker 1: all working together to solve the same problem, and I
Speaker 1: think ultimately in the in the future we will all
Speaker 1: be having part of the of the overall mix. There
Speaker 1: be different solutions for different locations. So you've been in
Speaker 1: this field for twenty plus years, that makes been a time.
Speaker 1: So sorry, I've been in my field plus years as well,
Speaker 1: and I'm not about to deploy something in Hawaii, So
Speaker 1: you got that going for you. You know, it's been
Speaker 1: a time when there has been this incredible growth in
Speaker 1: solar and wind power. It seems like wave power has
Speaker 1: been much harder, and I'm curious. I'm curious how that's
Speaker 1: been for you. I mean, has it been harder than
Speaker 1: you expected? Do you feel like you have lessons from it?
Speaker 1: You know, that's a it's a really good question. That
Speaker 1: I haven't really thought of it in that way before.
Speaker 1: It's been frustrating in many ways because you can see
Speaker 1: the amount of funding and progress that's going into wind
Speaker 1: and the scale up that's been achieved. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it also shows what we can achieve. So
Speaker 1: in some ways it's a little frustrating when you see
Speaker 1: the amount of money that's gone into it and the
Speaker 1: fact that we are a little bit further behind, and
Speaker 1: that we do have a much more difficult technology challenge
Speaker 1: to solve. On the other hand, once we solve it,
Speaker 1: than we have you know, a huge potential market. You
Speaker 1: got the whole ocean. There's wave all the time everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Especially you know if you look at where
Speaker 1: the majority of cities are, they're on coastlines, and so
Speaker 1: you can actually install wave energy converters in locations that
Speaker 1: are close to load. That has other significant advantages. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a minute with the lightning round. Now
Speaker 1: let's get back to what's your problem. Let's finish with
Speaker 1: the lightning round. What's one thing that's surprising about waves
Speaker 1: that most people don't know that they don't flow like water.
Speaker 1: The individual wave particle moves around in a circle. That
Speaker 1: if you actually go out into the ocean and you
Speaker 1: put something down on the surface of the water, it
Speaker 1: doesn't flow along with the waves. It actually moves around
Speaker 1: in a circle. And so it's only the energy that
Speaker 1: moves along with the waves, not the actual water particles.
Speaker 1: I also learned from your LinkedIn page that you were
Speaker 1: the archery club captain in grad school. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: still what do you say do archery? I don't even
Speaker 1: know the verb? Do you still arch? I do shoot sometimes?
Speaker 1: Do you still shoot? Yes? I do? And I have
Speaker 1: been I think now for you know, since I've been
Speaker 1: eighteen months old. It's always been a thing I kind
Speaker 1: of did you say, since you've been eighteen months old?
Speaker 1: I did? Actually, yes I have. There's actually a photograph
Speaker 1: of my a baby with the moment probably probably not
Speaker 1: but seven days exactly exactly. Now you've told everybody how
Speaker 1: old I am. But yeah, So I've done archery for
Speaker 1: you know, thirty forty years basically, And it's what is
Speaker 1: it about archery? What is it about archery that keeps
Speaker 1: you doing it? Why do you love it? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: part of it is the fact that you do it
Speaker 1: for a long time. So you get better at it,
Speaker 1: you get good at it, and therefore you like being
Speaker 1: good at something, and so therefore you can continue to
Speaker 1: be good at it. And I've been lucky enough to
Speaker 1: represent the national team for a number of years, and
Speaker 1: so you do it because of that. Also part of
Speaker 1: it is that just there's a lot of a certain
Speaker 1: amount of joy in shooting an arrow. You have a
Speaker 1: favorite mythological archer you honestly, the way the way it's
Speaker 1: always conveyed in books and in fiction, it's always frustrating.
Speaker 1: You're like, no, that's not how you do it, and
Speaker 1: it's like screaming at the TV or various things. It's like,
Speaker 1: what is going on here? What's one piece of advice
Speaker 1: you'd give to someone trying to solve a hard problem.
Speaker 1: I think you've got to persevere, basically, but you've also
Speaker 1: got to go back to first principles. You know sometimes
Speaker 1: that you won't. You'll come across something that's that's seemingly intractable,
Speaker 1: and then you sure perseverance is extremely important, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to take a step back, look at first principles,
Speaker 1: look at what other people have done, and then come
Speaker 1: at it again, maybe this time from a different angle.
Speaker 1: That's probably one bit of advice. Tell me a little
Speaker 1: more about perseverance, Like in your particular case, right, you've
Speaker 1: been working on this for a long time. Is there
Speaker 1: something about you? Is there something about the problem? Like
Speaker 1: how have you hung in there for so long? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Actually, I'm not even sure I
Speaker 1: have a great answer for that, but I would say
Speaker 1: that I really enjoy it. I really enjoy creating something
Speaker 1: in the sense that you have multiple problems here, and
Speaker 1: then you can, if you approach it correctly, you can
Speaker 1: break those down into individual parts, and then you can
Speaker 1: solve those independently, and then you can share that knowledge.
Speaker 1: And so being able to publish and share that knowledge
Speaker 1: and discuss it and help and then use that and
Speaker 1: what other people have done in order to solve a
Speaker 1: subsequent problem, that's invigorating. I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why I kept involved in this, and also because
Speaker 1: I believe right now the end is in sights. You know,
Speaker 1: we are close to being able to create a commercial system,
Speaker 1: and to be part of that is fantastic. Tim Munden
Speaker 1: is the chief technical officer of Ossula Power