Brilliant idea for ocean based power generation on front page of the Financial Times yesterday

[Pluvious]

Imagine a super heavy floating ocean buoy bopping on the surface of the deep ocean, with its extended underside "tail" in the shape of a funnel - its up/down motion pushing water up into the top sphere, building up high pressure to push out the water through several turbines

Quite a brilliant concept - the full scale prototype was quite amazing (see video)

Homepage:
https://panthalassa.com

Live test (ten months ago):

[NNadir]

1. We never run out of ideas to destroy ecosystems for...

...so called "renewable energy."

It's surprising to end up here on the left in Ayn Rand heaven.

[ihaveaquestion]

5. You think this will destroy the ocean ecosystem somehow?

Or are you saying the opposite in some obtuse way I'm not understanding?

[GB_RN]

13. Gotta Admit...

I’m as confused as you are. Charitable possibility: Perhaps he/she didn’t read the whole thing and misunderstood what was read.

Cynical possibility: Trolling? 🤷‍♂️

[WestMichRad]

16. Know your trolls.

This one is an avid pro-nuke, anti-renewables curmudgeonly (?) scientist who has long been posting (usually detailed scientific info) here. Lots of useful and informative stuff, but his bias on energy issues is… relentless. Nevertheless, I’m glad he’s on our side of most issues.

[ihaveaquestion]

18. OK, that makes sense then. Sad that they have to trash other's ideas, but scientists aren't always nice people. nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

28. You know... I've worked with a good number of scientists. A few of them I call "friends."

They are people of course, some of them are more social than others.

I have never known one as unpleasant/antisocial as NNadir.

NNadir is opposed to anything which is not nuclear. Batteries are bad. Hydrogen and renewables are equated with fossil fuels. NNadir is hostile to anyone who does not adhere rigidly to his zealously held “nothing but nukes” belief system.

[magicarpet]

2. I want one of these for my bathtub,....

.... I think I need a bigger bathtub ?

Alternate energy is the solution to forever wars with the resultant maiming and killing of our young men.

[ChicagoTeamster]

3. They could also put windmills and solar panels on it creating even more energy

[Auggie]

4. Awesome

I'd rather know these are at work in the ocean than oil rigs.

[Maninacan]

6. Solar

No moving parts! If i can do it anyone can.

[Prairie_Seagull]

7. Lets say for the sake of argument that

the CLIMATE CATASTROPHE is a 4 alarm fire as things stand right now. We need all (including the best scientists and engineers) thinking of solutions. If that comes with a big payday then so be it. This is not a time to pinch pennies.

It's a 4 alarm fire, on the planet.

[Sogo]

8. Really inspiring!

nt.

[JT45242]

9. Was hopeful about this until I looked beyond the video to who is backing it ...Peter Thiel and other trump humping nazis

Per the Oregonian https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/05/portland-based-ocean-energy-startup-gets-140-million-investment-from-billionaire-backers.html

The funding round, which will support continued development of prototype devices and development of a pilot manufacturing facility in Vancouver, values the company at $1 billion. It was led by billionaire Peter Thiel and includes a number of other prominent investors such as John Doerr, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and Paypal co-founder Max Levchin’s SciFi Ventures.

And it goes from cheap energy for everyone to data centers for oligarchs.

'So depressing to think that this apartheid pushing dickhead is behind this.

[ihaveaquestion]

14. That is concerning... Hopefully the investment is only tied to making money and not ideological. nt

[progressoid]

20. Hmm

Kind of a mixed bag of bad and good and sort of bad investors.

[Zackzzzz]

10. Forgive me please, It may be I don't understand the process.

But do we have to worry about the curious fish that live in the ocean
being sucked up and pulverized?

[ihaveaquestion]

15. I'm sure they would have thought of that.

The video showed a clip of the interior of the sphere working and no fish were there.

[Pluvious]

27. My guess would be...

That the funnel mouth would have a screen, as the expelled water would clog up the turbines if there was fish in the mix

[moreland01]

11. Dang! I was really hoping to see

it actually sending energy back to terra firma. They offered 2 ideas for actually transmitting the energy back to humans who live on land, but they didn't get that far yet in their development of the project. I wonder how far out into the future this is. So amazing. It must be so exciting for these engineers.

[mitch96]

12. Ok what am I missing here, I went to their website and did a google search. I cannot find out how they

move the electrical energy produced by the device to shore...One is mentioning using it as a device to power on board data centers. Hummmm

I always thought it would be neat to use tidal energy to power turbines...LIke the Bay of Fundy
The bay water rises and falls oveer 50 feet twice per day..
Dat's a lot of liquid...
m

[ihaveaquestion]

17. They didn't talk about that. Presumably it would be via underwater powerlines, but IDK. nt

[mitch96]

21. The devil is in the details, eh? Great idea though...nt

[hunter]

24. Dat's a lot of environmental destruction too.

Some of the most environmentally destructive proposals come from people who call themselves "environmentalists."

[thought crime]

25. No energy transmission

An alternative to direct transmission is to use the "original" energy to produce hydrogen. The sustainable clean energy Nirvana includes a Hydrogen Economy where renewable energy supplies a hydrogen market. Hydrogen can be used to power transport devices (trains, planes and automobiles).

The best use of this power at sea? “Clean fuels and compute,” explains Garth. For fuels, Panthalassa can make clean hydrogen that ships back to shore on autonomous collection vessels. For computing, the ocean provides an ideal cooling solution, eliminating one of the major costs of operating data centers. Compute hardware sits on board the device, and AI workloads are performed via LEO satellite. The simple design of the nodes means that manufacturing can scale fast: fast enough to provide an alternative to land-based data centers.

https://gigascale.com/profiles/panthalassa-harnessing-ocean-power/

[BeneteauBum]

19. The ocean is a tough environment

Seems to be a good idea if the maintenance costs can be kept low.

Peace ☮️

[thought crime]

26. That was my first thought, too.

The devices are made of steel and steel rusts. But my personal bias is that anything that floats is good. Although I'm not so sure about cruise ships.

[flvegan]

22. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but

when I see the folks involved, I don't see any sort of altruism or human benefit. What I see is a way to provide continuous power and data for AI/data centers, even if things go...wrong (lets use that word) in the home country. The same people who are building off-grid, self sustained panacea islands, man made or otherwise, and buying self sustaining ocean-going ships, airplanes, whatever to get out and stay out of dodge for however long, are simply making sure they can continue to make their money uninterrupted via this new ocean bound solution.

And I don't believe for a minute, that all that bobbing, pressure, intake is NOT going to kill every single thing it comes into contact with. It'll have a nice, strong filter to keep anything that's not seawater out. It won't prejudice between seaweed, debris or ocean life. They don't care.

[hunter]

23. No numbers.

There's probably a reason for that.

I doubt Peter Thiel even gives a shit if this works or not, or what the environmental impacts are. It's just something he can point to while he and the other tech bros are promoting their filthy gas powered data centers.

Don't be fooled by these guys.

[OKIsItJustMe]

29. Thank you for posting this.

As the video suggests, there have been numerous schemes for harvesting wave energy for centuries. I believe this is the most elegant I’ve seen.

I have my questions, like "how much electricity does one buoy generate?" "Do you exclude sea life from the mechanism?” (and so on) However, so far, it looks promising.