Beaver Island residents sign up for U-M wave energy panel
Each member will provide essential input for U-M engineers to design a wave energy prototype that best suits the island’s needs.
Michigan Engineering News
Experts
Xiaofan Li
Assistant Research Scientist of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
Lei Zuo
The afternoon sun glimmered off the clear blue waters of Lake Michigan as the Emerald Isle glided across its smooth, mirror-like surface on Nov. 15, 2024. Although today was smooth sailing, one of the University of Michigan researchers aboard the 130-foot ferry knew the lake could pack a punch.
Vishnu Vijayasankar, a doctoral student in naval architecture and marine engineering, had seen first hand how large waves on Lake Michigan could grow during a previous visit to Charlevoix, Mich., the Emerald Isle’s port on the Michigan mainland.
“The waves were so violent, I would say probably around 1.5 meters [4.9 feet],” said Vijayasankar. “I was there with my family and a friend, and we were dumbstruck by how huge the waves were. I was actually scared to stand on the shore.”
Most engineers might think of the pounding of waves solely as an obstacle to be overcome, but Vijayasankar knew they could be constructive too. The energy in waves can be harnessed to rotate a generator and make electricity. For remote island communities that struggle to stay connected with mainland power infrastructure, wave energy could be an important source of local, sustainable energy.
Vijayasankar was taking the Emerald Isle to one such community on the northeast shore of Beaver Island, around 33 miles away from Charlevoix, Mich. The remote town of St. James was home to around 600 year-round residents who were dependent on an underwater cable to the mainland for electricity. Whenever anything happens to that connection, the Beaver Islanders risk losing power.
Lake Michigan’s waves could one day be a local source of energy for the community. Near Beaver Island, just a one-meter wide slice of average-sized waves approaching the coast contains enough energy to power three U.S. homes, though the best way to convert it to carbon-free electricity is an open question. Vijayasankar and three other U-M engineers were traveling to the island to help the community tap into that energy source.
Joining Vijayasankar was Xiaofan Li, who was an assistant research scientist in naval architecture and marine engineering at U-M at the time. He recently started a new position as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Hong Kong. Both engineers have designed and built wave energy devices in professor Lei Zuo‘s lab at the University of Michigan.
They were assisted by Jui-Chen Chen, a master’s student of naval architecture and marine engineering who also studies the mechanics of wave energy devices, and Sophia Bleakley Wasserman, a chemical engineering undergraduate studying how marine organisms grow on the surfaces of wave energy devices and reduce their effectiveness.
Extracting wave energy isn’t simple. For starters, the team must build a device that efficiently creates electricity without breaking when the waves grow large or the lake freezes.
“Lake Michigan has a lot of potential, but it also has a lot of variability, so we have to know the right time to get energy out of it,” said Vijayasankar. “During October through January, the wave power is high, but it’s the same season when the lake could freeze. We need to come up with a perfect design that can withstand freezing temperatures and store energy from these large waves.”
Engineers haven’t agreed on a framework to determine the best wave energy converter for any given scenario, setting it far behind farm-ready wind and solar energy. This is both an engineering challenge and an opportunity to engage coastal communities in designing energy-harvesting devices that are tailor-made for their environments and needs. Although the Zuo lab already designed and built several wave energy converters, none of their previous devices were built with Beaver Island in mind.
Without community-centric design, renewable energy projects can face terminal pushback. An offshore wind energy project planned near the coast of Cleveland, Ohio, ended in 2023 due to challenges from residents and environmental groups who feared damage to wildlife and treasured views.
“Engineers often just want to maximize the power output of their device, but it’s important to think about the end user and whether the device will actually be useful to people,” said Li. “Once we’ve assessed the feasibility of a wave energy device and what the community is comfortable with, then we can start thinking about how to help. Ideally, we would find something useful to power that also isn’t super important for daily life. We don’t want to create a problem if the first iteration of our prototype fails.”
To design a prototype that the residents of Beaver Island actually want in their community, Li and Vijayasankar will issue surveys to learn more about the community’s needs and form a community-led panel that provides regular feedback on the prototype. This trip was intended to kickstart that process.
When the Emerald Isle reached the dock, Li and his colleagues disembarked and headed across the road to the Beaver Island community center, where they had organized a workshop for later that evening. Luckily, the flyers they had posted ahead of time created a buzz. Around 30 residents had signed up, and a few late attendance requests continued to trickle in during the ferry ride. Vijayasankar was beginning to feel the pressure.
“I’m feeling a little nervous because this is something we’ve always wanted to do,” said Vijayasankar. “It’s a new way of doing things, but it will be essential for our project to be successful.”
At the community center, they were greeted by Vicky Fingeroot, who has lived part-time on Beaver Island for more than 18 years and became a full-time resident in 2021. She is also the owner of a catering service on the island, and her business not only arranged dinner for the workshop but helped advertise the event to ensure a good turnout.
“It’s really important; we need something like this here,” said Fingeroot, who is also a trustee in St. James Township. “We need community buy-in.”
Fingeroot said her eagerness for local, renewable energy to take off on the island stems from one bad experience around two years ago. High winds toppled aerial cables connecting the island’s power plant to the underwater cable running to the mainland, leaving the entire island without power, according to a report issued by St. James Township. While the island’s main electricity provider—Great Lakes Energy—restored power to the town of St. James the next morning, most of the island didn’t have power until two to three days after the storm, the report said.
“I think incidents like this should result in our citizens understanding that alternative, sustainable power sources are necessary for us,” said Bobbi Welke, the supervisor for St. James Township.
The 2022 storm wasn’t the first time that the island’s connection to the mainland was compromised. In 1983, a barge anchor hooked into the underwater cable connecting the island to the grid on the mainland, forcing the island to conservatively use their diesel-fueled backup generators, according to a 1983 issue of the Beaver Beacon.
The umbilical cord—as the underwater cable to the mainland is called by some residents—failed again in the winter of 1999, but a back-up generator malfunctioned and couldn’t reliably provide power, reported the Traverse City Record-Eagle. To make matters worse, ice-capped waters prevented the Emerald Isle from fetching a new emergency generator. The U.S. Coast Guard had to send an icebreaker to escort the ferry and deliver warmth.
Frustrations with the island’s reliance on a single connection to the mainland drew several residents to the workshop. A few attendees hoped that wave energy could offer reprieve.
“Right now, wind and waves make us fear that we are going to lose power,” said Catherine Meintsma, who had been a seasonal resident on the island for over 50 years before becoming a year-round resident five years ago. “Maybe wave energy could reverse that.”
The optimistic attendees offered helpful suggestions on how a prototype wave energy generator could plug into the island. Some suggested that the U-M prototype could power a now defunct lighthouse for decorative use. A few even offered to let the engineers test a prototype on their private property.
Other residents were more skeptical. They were concerned about being the guinea pigs for intellectual property that would ultimately go to a private company with little stake in the island’s well-being. A few residents worried about whether they had the money and expertise to maintain a device, if one were to stay on the island.
“We hadn’t thoroughly considered who the intellectual property would belong to, or who would own and maintain the device,” said Li. “We need to work these details out if we’re designing the device together.”
Luckily, 15 residents signed up for the team’s wave energy panel to help work out those details, and 21 residents are interested in taking the team’s survey.
“I think we got a lot of helpful information and have more than enough people for the next round of follow-up interviews,” said Vijayasankar. “We want to be realistic about what we can accomplish, so we’ll need to estimate how much power we can feasibly draw from a prototype before we decide what to do. But just powering a light bulb on the island might even help people feel more confident in the technology.”