Giant buoys over 60-feet tall may one day generate clean energy to feed into local power grids—but making it a reality isn’t as simple as going with the ocean’s flow. To successfully keep the idea afloat, it’s all about timing. Swedish company CorPower recently announced the completion of its first commercial scale buoy generator demonstration program off the coast of northern Portugal. Over the course of a six-month test run, CorPower’s three-story C4 Wave Energy Converter (WEC) endured four major Atlantic storms and adapted to constantly shifting wave heights. Although final analysis is still ongoing, CorPower believes the technology offers a promising new way to transition towards a sustainable future. As New Atlas explains, the basic theory behind CorPower’s C4 is relatively straightforward. As its air-filled chassis bobs along the rolling waves, an internal system converts the up-and-down movement into rotational power for energy generation. At the same time, however, a tensioned, internal pneumatic cylinder reacts in real-time to wave phases—slightly delaying its movements behind the waves amplifies the buoy’s bobbing, thus creating even more …