Offshore staff
SEATTLE – The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Oscilla Power a $1.8-million grant to accelerate the development of a utility-scale version of its Triton wave energy converter technology.
The $1.8 million will be augmented with an additional $200,000 in cost-sharing from the company and its partners Glosten Associates, Spencer Fluid Power, Applied Motion Systems, Applied Control Engineering, and DNV.
The project funding will enable performance improvements and result in a detailed design for a system that is pre-permitted for the DOE’s PacWave, a first-of-its-kind, grid-connected, full-scale test facility for wave energy conversion technologies offshore Oregon. The system will be suitable for over two years of continuous operation at the PacWave site and will be designed to ensure a clear pathway to IEC type certification for the first commercial units, the company said.
Oscilla Power has developed a system known as a “multi-mode point absorber.” It consists of a geometrically optimized surface float connected to a ring-shaped, vertically asymmetric heave plate by three taut, flexible tendons.
The company said that unlike most conventional wave energy devices, Triton’s surface float can extract energy from ocean waves in all six degrees of freedom (heave, pitch, surge, sway, roll and yaw) allowing for increased energy capture across a wider range of ocean conditions. This provides a greater average annual energy production and a substantially lower levelized cost of electricity.
01/27/2022
