After years of meetings, public testimony and planning, the state of Oregon approved a plan Thursday night that lays out where wave energy companies can locate their projects off its coast.

Construction is underway off the Oregon Coast for what would be the nation's first commercial wave-energy farm. Project planners say nine more buoys will be near Reedsport by 2012.

Oregon State University is harnessing the power of the ocean by taking the next step in wave technology. Campus scientists are set to go with a new test buoy that's about to hit the waters off the Oregon Coast.

Ocean Power Technologies has installed smaller, single test buoys in Hawaii and New Jersey. But the larger buoys proposed for Oregon would be arrayed in four rows of 50 for a total of 200, requiring about 1.5 square miles of ocean, according to...