Off Oregon, America’s first major wave energy testing site just opened where buoys, columns, and floating arms will harvest the ocean’s relentless motion for the continental grid

The same administration that canceled billions in clean energy grants and spent nearly $4 billion buying back offshore wind leases just approved a landmark ocean energy project off the Oregon coast.

PacWave South, developed by Oregon State University, is now the first wave energy testing site connected to the continental U.S. grid — a milestone that cleared a direct review by Trump’s Energy Department before it could open. Buoys, columns, and floating arms will soon harvest the ocean’s motion and deliver electricity ashore. What made this project different enough to survive is a question the facility’s backers have a very specific answer to.

A clean energy milestone in an unlikely political moment

PacWave South’s path to opening required a direct “go/no-go” review inside Trump’s Energy Department — one that needed the energy secretary’s personal sign-off. According to PacWave Director Dan Hellin, that approval came last summer. The grid connection followed this summer. The sequence matters: this wasn’t a project that slipped through a bureaucratic gap. It was reviewed, approved, and opened under the current administration.

The Department of Energy acknowledges that capturing even a small fraction of that potential would represent a meaningful contribution to the national energy mix.

That makes the milestone genuinely striking. The same administration has canceled billions in clean energy grants, slowed permitting across the sector, and spent nearly $4 billion buying back offshore wind leases to halt those projects entirely. Wave energy, somehow, cleared a different bar. PacWave South is now the first large-scale wave energy test site connected to the continental U.S. grid — a distinction its developers have been working toward since 2016.

What PacWave South actually is — and why it matters

Oregon State University developed PacWave South with close to $150 million in Department of Energy investment accumulated since 2016. That funding covered siting, permitting, and construction of a facility designed from the start to solve a specific industry problem.

The site is “pre-permitted.” Companies can bring their wave energy devices there and test them in real ocean conditions without acquiring their own individual permits — a process that typically costs significant time and money. Developers skip one of the most painful steps in bringing a new energy technology to market.

Full-scale, grid-connected open-water testing is, as Hellin put it, “the real bottleneck for the global industry.” Very few facilities like this exist anywhere in the world. The U.S. Navy operates a comparable site in Hawaii, but PacWave South is the first of its kind on the continental grid.

How ocean waves become electricity

Three main device types will be testable at PacWave South, each converting wave motion into electricity through a different mechanism.

Point absorbers are the most common. These buoy-like devices ride the surface, moving up and down with passing waves and driving a generator through that vertical motion. They’re the technology most people picture when they imagine wave energy.

Oscillating water columns work differently. As waves rise and fall inside a partially submerged chamber, they push and pull air through a turbine mounted above the waterline — one that spins in both directions, generating electricity throughout the wave cycle.

Then there are attenuators: long, segmented floating structures oriented parallel to the direction of wave travel. As waves pass underneath, the sections flex relative to one another, and that flexing motion is what gets converted into power. All three device types use subsea cables to carry electricity from the open ocean to the shore-side grid.

The national security argument that may have saved it

The Trump administration’s case against offshore wind rests heavily on national security grounds. Officials have characterized wind turbines as a threat — a framing used to justify halting lease development across U.S. coastal waters.

Wave energy received the opposite characterization. The Department of Energy stated that wave energy converters are “uniquely suited to provide power sources for national security applications,” pointing to specific use cases: powering remote sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles, and equipment requiring persistent, low-visibility power in sensitive offshore environments. Forward military bases in coastal areas could also benefit.

That framing appears central to why wave energy survived a review process hostile to most clean energy sectors. The technology doesn’t just avoid the national security objection — it actively satisfies it.

An industry still waiting to prove itself

For all the significance of PacWave South’s opening, the facility hasn’t yet generated a single watt of electricity. No wave energy devices have arrived at the site. Developers are facing delays tied to disruptions in federal funding, a broader pattern affecting clean energy projects across the country.

The gap between a functioning test site and a functioning industry remains real. Federal estimates suggest marine energy could theoretically supply around 57% of U.S. electricity needs. The Department of Energy acknowledges that capturing even a small fraction of that potential would represent a meaningful contribution to the national energy mix.

What comes next depends on whether developers can navigate the current funding environment and get devices into the water. PacWave South has solved the infrastructure problem. The harder question — whether the industry can move fast enough to use it — is still open.

Daniel Garcia

Daniel García is an Editor-in-Chief with strong expertise in structural work and engineering principles. He combines this technical foundation with deep knowledge of energy, spatial design, and emerging technologies, bringing a forward-thinking and analytical approach to editorial leadership.