Albeit it is a long-term proposition, the Department of Energy (DoE) is eyeing to scale up development of ocean energy to become part of the country’s future power supply solutions.

In a presentation at a Workshop on Clean Energy for the Philippines and Asia, DoE assistant secretary Mario Marasigan  unveiled prospects of project propagation for ocean-based energy by harnessing technology potential on ocean thermal energy conversion or OTEC, wave, marine and tidal resources.

But he qualified that the development horizon for such technologies may be longer; with DoE targeting year 2015 as a feasible kick-off point.

For countries experimenting with tidal energy, including South Korea, one of the hurdles they have seen is on the technology’s prohibitive development cost – which may hit as high as $12 million to $15 million for every megawatt of installation.

They have similarly noted that the technology for this particular renewable energy (RE) resource must first reach commercial scale and maturity for ocean energy development prospects to eventually turn out viable.

Marasigan emphasized though that the government is set at exploring “commercialization of ocean energy project options.”

In the batch of RE contracts already inked by the DoE with prospective developers, there are two ventures set for ocean energy development, primarily the ones tendered by Deep Ocean Power Philippines, a local investment arm of California- based Deep Ocean Power, which is scouring around 36 sites.

Marasigan noted that the country’s ocean energy potential may yield as much as 170,000 megawatts of capacity; but he is not discounting the hurdles of bringing these into commercial fruition.

In fact, in the 2009-2030 planning period cast by the energy department, the expectation on ocean energy contribution to the RE portfolio would just be at 120 megawatts.

The government and some groups initially evaluated tidal current systems in the Hinatuan Passage in Surigao and San Bernardino Strait between Leyte and Samar, and have been looking at possibly developing these into electric power.