Better late than never. But why so late at all?

I recall sitting in the public library in Erdington, Birmingham, UK, when I was aged 12, studying details of what was then called the (Millington?) Sea Snake -- a chain of cylindrical floats that captured energy at the hinges and converted it to electricity.

That was 48 years ago!

The only difference I can see is that they've now translated the name into Latin.

In the UK at that time (1960) the political battle was between coal (keeping the mining unions happy) and nuclear (keeping the Aldermaston weapon-making facility happy). All other alternatives were kicked into the long grass and starved of serious funding.

What goes around comes around. Even now the pro-nuclear lobby is desperate to gain approval for a new generation of expensive power stations - knowing that a decade from now renewable energy resources will be alarmingly competitive...

48 years ago the price of oil was US$3/barrel?

Thomas - The UK still has a few oil-fired power stations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Oil-fired_power_stations_in_England. Though I don't know if anyone is daring to run them at current prices. (Scotland I think only ever had one - and that was built just in time to be mothballed when oil prices surged 30+ years ago.)

Good for Mr. Bodman and DOE. And it appears that the battle between coal, nuke and renewables will continue. However the bottom line is affected by new criterion. Energy purveyors exploiting non-sustainable resources will have to pay the cost of image damage. Until now, if you made enough money, a bad image was written off as the cost of doing business. Today, with a lot more transparency and light bouncing around, a poor image directly hurts the bottom line.

Wave buoys and Pelamis-type motion capture technology will probably have a lower maintenance and installation footprint than offshore wind. Then there are the undersea turbines and even an Australian outfit making artificial kelp to capture energy. Lots of opportunity here.

Why is Portugal partnering with the USA, when all the expertise is with UK and Danish companies?

I do not think the USA has a single wave power installation of significance.

Just a thought.. drifting away from intended use of this technology. How about if I cut the tethers and just use this as a boat? A multi-hinged boat in which the hinges provide the electricity needed to drive it along. Could I cross oceans this way?

So far, the historical record shows American involvement in "green technology" resulted in it getting bought up and shelved so it would not impact the insane profitability of oil corporations.

Here there is zero American research, and a buy into the results once it is shown to work, but no actual plan of further installations of energy producing equipment.

hmmmmm...

Portugal is giving good conditions to investments in industrial alternative energy sources. That's why Portugal have now 20% of its residential power needs satisfied through wind power. There are also some interesting experimental projects with solar PV, (e.g. Moura, Serpa, MARL), but just totalling 80 MW of peak power.

In the small scale there is the government micro generation initiative, but people are facing difficulties selling they’re energy surplus to the only Portuguese operator (EDP), they say the grid “is not prepared”, you know… monopolies.

"Could I cross oceans this way?"

Yes provided there are no stretches of becalmed water where no wind blows. And, you do not need to get to your destination on a schedule.