Jason Bak, an applied physicist by training, found gold and diamonds in the Canadian arctic in the late 1990s using electromagnetic techniques. In Ireland, he worked for a gold mine that sold for 30-times its purchase price.

But it was a less ostentatious money-making prospect that inspired him to launch Finavera Renewables, a Vancouver-based startup that sees a business opportunity in producing electricity from wind and ocean waves. Unlike gold, whose price can be extremely volatile, electricity generated by wind mills and offshore wave farms is a commodity whose future is always bright, argues CEO Mr. Bak.

“Electricity only gets more expensive,” he said. “It never gets cheaper. It’s a commodity that’s always growing in price.”

Finavera’s approach is to use wind projects to generate revenue, while the company works to develop its wave energy technology, according to Mr. Bak.

That fledgling technology took a couple of baby steps last week a few miles off the coast of Newport Beach, Oregon, where Finavera put the latest version of its wave energy converter device, dubbed AquaBuOY, into the Pacific.

The device floats atop the ocean and uses rubber hose-pumps to convert the vertical motion of the waves into pressurized seawater. That pressurized seawater, in turn, powers the turbines that drive an electrical generator. Previous versions, according to Mr. Bak, used metal rods, which were more costly and more trouble to maintain.

This stepping stone “allows us to prove the concept,” said Mr. Bak. “The next step is simply increasing the power output of our technology [which would] reduce our unit cost of energy.” AquaBuOY generates a maximum of 250 kilowatts at any instant in time, he said.

Finavera Renewables -- which was formed when Mr. Bak’s original company, Dublin, Ireland-based Finavera, split into two entities in 2005 -- raised capital on the TSX Venture Exchange, where it listed in January. The other company is natural gas firm, Finavera Gas.

Finavera’s system is moored, rather than mounted, to the ocean floor. That simple feature means less red tape and fewer headaches, as regulations for seafloor-mounted installations can be complicated, the company said.

Next year the company plans to develop and test the third-generation of AquaBuOY and, by 2009, it hopes to put four of the devices in the water and connect them to the grid via an undersea transmission line, Mr. Bak said.

In addition to the Newport Beach test site, Finavera has a demonstration site in Makah Bay, Washington, and is developing projects in Coos County, Oregon; Figueira da Foz, Portugal; Ucluelet, Canada; and South Africa.

Finavera, however, is further along in building wind projects, including a 20-megawatt wind farm in Germany that is scheduled to go online this fall and a 150-megawatt wind project in Canada that it expects to finish in 2009, Mr. Bak said.