The developers behind the ACER2 wave energy project have started testing the Sea Power Platform at the FloWave test tank.
The survivability trials are underway at the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility, the leader of the project 4C Engineering informed via social media on December 5, 2017.
Rockall Solutions, the provider of research and engineering services for the marine renewables industry, is assisting the trials in areas of model design, sensor specification, and data analysis, said Alan Henry, a senior consultant within the company.
The testing is being done as part of the Attenuator Cost of Energy Reduction (ACER2) project, which received £700,000 from Wave Energy Scotland to proceed to the second stage of the organization’s Novel Wave Energy Converter (NWEC) technology development program.
Building on the knowledge gained through the first stage of the ACER project, the second-stage project will continue to develop the Sea Power Platform via simulation and wave tank test programs to investigate and optimize the device geometry and power take-off (PTO) damping strategy for best power capture at a given site.
Among other testing activities planned for this stage of the program, the developers will perform concept engineering of full-scale wave energy converter system to identify solutions for all subsystems, according to 4C Engineering.
Also, the team plans to complete the front end engineering design of a large-scale test device that will be deployed and tested at a nursery site.
The Sea Power Platform is a two-body wave energy converter (WEC) that has been under development since 2008.
The WEC is classed as a floating attenuator device with energy extracted via the relative flex motion of the two bodies about a hinged joint
A PTO system extracts power by damping the flex motion of the device, according to Wave Energy Scotland.
The project will determine, in an open and verifiable manner, the power extraction capabilities of the device, along with the costs involved in delivering this power at full scale for Scottish and Irish marine locations.
Aside from 4C Engineering, other project partners include Sea Power, FloWave, 4c Design, Offshore Subsea Consultancy Services, and Ideality.
The second stage of Wave Energy Scotland’s NWEC program is expected to run until fall 2018.