Throughout a dock of the port of Los Angeles, the intriguing blue metal floats dance according to the waves and transform their oscillations into electricity. Innovative, the installation may have one of the keys to accelerate the transition of energy. “The project is very simple,” explains Inna Braverman, co -founder of Eco Wave Power, an Israeli company company convinced that Houlomotor energy represents a “revolution.”
As piano touches, floats descend and climb to each wave. Connected to hydraulic pistons, they push a biodegradable fluid to a container full of accumulators, which resemble large diving bottles. When they release the pressure, they activate a turbine that generates electric current.
Around 60,000 houses
If this pilot project convinces the Californian authorities, Inna Braverman hopes to cover the 13 -kilometer dock that protects the port with several hundred floats. This would produce enough electricity to supply “around 60,000 homes.”
Exploiting the colossal force of the ocean has been a true marine snake for decades: unlike solar energy, unproductive at night or wind, depending on the weather, the sea offers an almost perpetual movement. According to the United States Ministry of Energy, waves on the American West Coast could feed 130 million homes and cover 34% of the United States electricity production.
However, Houlomotor energy remains the poor father of renewable energies, unable to achieve marketing. The sector is full of shipwrecks and corporate projects sunk by the brutality of the sea: the development of quite robust devices to collect furious waves, while the transport of electricity through submarine cables to the coast has so far demonstrated a mission impossible to make profitable.
“99 % of competitors have chosen to install their equipment in the middle of the ocean, where it is very expensive and where they are constantly broken down,” summarizes Inna Braverman, for whom “they really cannot carry out their projects.” With his retractable device set in Quay, the entrepreneur believes that he has found the Grail.
Niche use
The idea seduces Krish Thiagarajan Sharman, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts. “The Achilles Houlomotor heel are maintenance costs. Having a device near the shore, where you can walk on a dock to inspect the system, therefore, it has a lot of meaning,” says this expert, not linked to the project. However, the academic questions the potential to multiply these facilities. “This thirteen kilometers launch is not common. It is rare to have such a long seap walk to produce electricity,” he said.
At this stage, the Houlomotor energy remains more appropriate for the “uses of niche” according to Krish Thiagarajan Shaman, such as the food of the remote islands that depend on the generators. Eco Wave Power sees larger: the company has identified 77 sites that can be used in the United States and covet other markets. In Israel, up to 100 homes in the port of Jaffa have been shining since December thanks to the waves. In 2026, 1,000 Portuguese homes should be able to do the same in Porto. Other facilities are planned in Taiwan and India. Inna Braverman dreams of 20 megawatts, a critical capacity to offer a competitive electricity price with wind turbines.
The entrepreneur also ensures that his floats have no “environmental impact” and are neutral for aquatic fauna, because they establish “in the existing structures built by humans, which already disturb the environment.” These promises resonate in California, where artificial intelligence exploits the needs in electricity. The State Energy Commission recently stressed the potential of Houlomotor energy to help achieve promised carbon neutrality by 2045.
“You have to keep the course”
To finish the project in Los Angeles, it should take seven years, according to Jenny Krusoe, founder of Altema, an organization that has helped its development. A useful horizon to obtain the necessary authorizations of the federal state, despite Donald Trump’s aversion to renewable energies.
Source: BFM TV
