The Seattle-based company Oscilla Power has so far raised over $200K from its crowdfunding campaign on MicroVentures.
Specifically, through this campaign , Oscilla is looking to raise up to $1 million.
Oscilla Power’s flagship product is the Triton wave energy converter.
The device consists of a large surface float connected by three tendons to a submerged ring-shaped reaction structure.
As surface waves move the float, it reacts against the ring-shaped structure, causing rotation of drivetrains located inside the float.
The Triton uses three drivetrains, one per tendon, to generate power and also deliver it to the power grid through a submarine cable.
For the purpose of utility-scale energy production, Oscilla Power envisions connecting multiple Triton devices in arrays to produce large amounts of grid-scale power.
The company is designing various-sized Tritons that have differing energy capabilities (i.e. 1MW versus 1kW) for specific scale use cases.
The community-scale deployment Triton-C at the Kaneohe Marine Corps in Hawaii is Oscilla Power’s largest project to date.
The Triton-C is a 100kW wave energy system for remote communities and facilities.
All detailed engineering has been completed, and the wave energy converter float and drivetrain are currently in the construction phase.
The company anticipates full system deployment in Q4 2020, or early next year.
It also expects to test the Triton-C for a year in Hawaii before it will generate power commercially.
Oscilla Power scores $1.1M for subsea energy storage R&D
Furthermore, in August this year, the company landed $1.1 million from the US Department of Energy as part of the Phase II SBIR award .
This award should help the Seattle-based company develop a novel underwater energy storage technology and investigate the best practice on connecting large-scale farms of ocean wave energy devices to the grid.
It should allow a continuation of Oscilla’s work that emphasized the advantages of co-locating energy storage with wave energy systems .