What Works for Wind Power Could Also Work Under the Sea

Jim Dehlsen, a 79-year-old wind-energy pioneer who sold one turbine company to Enron and took another public, has spent his life thinking about the best way to make blades turn in the sky. For his latest effort, he’s flipping a turbine upside down and plunging it dozens of meters into the ocean, in waters that are up to 300 meters deep. There, marine currents rotate the 13.5-meter long blades to pull power from the sea.

Aquantis, Dehlsen’s Santa Barbara, Calif., company, will start deploying turbines in 2018 in waters near Wales and the Isle of Wight. Its most ambitious project is a 200-megawatt field of marine turbines in the strong Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida, due to come online in 2019 or 2020. The world’s oceans remain relatively untapped as an energy source, compared with wind and solar. By 2030, Dehlsen says, marine energy could serve 8 percent or 9 percent of U.S. power needs. “The oceans are the major remaining potential for renewable energy,” he says. “Getting on that now is really urgent.”