Any fledgling technology is going to have its troubles gaining ground but trying to get a foothold during an economic crisis is doubly hard. Such is the lesson currently being learned by tidal power as yet another major wave power company, Pelamis Wave Power, announces it is pulling its tidal power generators out of the water.

The three generators, which were off the coast of Portugal, were yanked out due to “technical and financial difficulties.”

The removal of the Pelamis Wave Power project along with the wrecking of Verdant Powers East River project in New York has brought the world’s totally number of wave power projects down to 19 (although Verdant Power’s project may be reinstalled).

While both nature and the credit crisis wage a war of attrition on current tidal power projects, new projects are also meeting resistance. Recently, Vancouver, British Columbia’s Finavera Renewables decided to opt out of the wave power industry when the California’s Public Utilities Commission sank its plans for a project there.

All news isn’t bad however, as San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom is still pushing ahead with plans for a large wave power project that could produce as much as 100 MW in the Bay Area. The U.K. is also mapping the currents of its coastal regions in anticipation of sinking more money into wave power.

Lockheed is partnering with wave power company Ocean Power Technologies to develop a utility-scale project off the coast of California or Oregon. Lockheed will construct and run the project while Ocean Power will provide its Powerbuoy generators. OPT’s PowerBuoy system extracts the natural energy in ocean waves, and is based on the integration of patented technologies in hydrodynamics, electronics, energy conversion and computer control systems. The PowerBuoy is a sophisticated system capable of responding to differing wave conditions.The Lockheed-Ocean Power project would be the first commercial wave farm which generates reliable, clean, and environmentally-beneficial electricity in the U.S.

This is a big green step for Lockheed, and a real forward thinking investment in the company’s future. By getting into wave power, Lockheed is doing it’s best to solidify it’s place in the future’s more eco-friendly business world. Oceans are considered by scientists and engineers to be one of the most powerful sources of energy on earth and studies have shown that harnessing that energy could power the entire planet twice over.