Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy, wave energy has the poten­tial to power over 100 mil­lion US homes, but is com­pletely under­uti­lized at the moment. Wave energy has the advan­tage of higher pre­dictabil­ity, night­time avail­abil­ity, and a high energy den­sity (~30 kW/​m of coast­line). Such high energy den­si­ties also enable the use of the renew­able resource for desali­na­tion. The Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab­o­ra­tory at UC Berke­ley has part­nered with Cal­Wave Power Tech­nolo­gies, one of the win­ners of the US Wave Energy Prize, to bet­ter assess this poten­tial. To learn more about Cal­Wave, please visit http://​cal​wave​.org. This pre­sen­ta­tion will include pre­lim­i­nary results from this col­lab­o­ra­tion includ­ing appro­pri­ate sit­ing, eco­nomic mod­el­ing, and per­for­mance char­ac­ter­i­za­tion for wave energy technologies.