Overview
- PacWave South, which held a ribbon-cutting on Aug. 27, is now built, grid-connected and declared operational with subsea cables transmitting power to an onshore monitoring facility near Seal Rock.
- The site uses four undersea export cables and roughly 50 miles of cable to send electricity and device data from about seven miles offshore back to the Utility Connection and Monitoring Facility for regulation and grid entry.
- Bonneville Power Administration signed a power-purchase agreement with PacWave in 2025 and Central Lincoln People’s Utility District will distribute test-generated electricity to local customers once devices begin producing power.
- The pre-permitted status removes the need for each developer to secure lengthy export permits and build heavy onshore infrastructure, which PacWave’s backers say will lower costs and speed demonstrations of new wave-energy machines.
- Beyond power output, PacWave is set up to study how devices interact with marine life and ecosystems as developers deploy inaugural systems, a step intended to inform safety, permitting for commercial arrays and potential scale-up of a DOE-estimated 1,400 TWh/year U.S. wave resource.