11/05/2017
Sea Power Ltd is very excited to announce the award of a Stage 2 Wave Energy Scotland contract led by consulting engineers 4cEngineering to further develop the novel Seapower Platform wave energy converter. The contract provides for 100% of Seapower and 4cE’s project costs and has been awarded following its submission to Wave Energy Scotland’s competitive Novel Wave Energy Converter (NWEC) funding call.
Wave Energy Scotland was established in late 2014 as part of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and is fully funded by the Scottish Government. Wave Energy Scotland provides funding packages for the development of innovative technologies to produce low cost, efficient and reliable components and subsystems which can form the basis of cost effective wave energy generation for Scotland.
The previous 1st Stage NWEC1 covered testing various novel geometry configurations of Seapower Platform models at ~ 1:25 scale, with numerical analysis carried out by DNV/GL, and a fully transparent and auditable LCOE model was created. Importantly, this round of tank testing at KHL Strathclyde led to a discovery about the most performance-sensitive aspects of the device.
This newly awarded 2nd Stage will build on the knowledge and experience gained in both the NWEC1 project, and Sea Power’s 1:4 scale device deployment at SmartBay.
The NWEC2 project will:
- Use further numerical modelling to optimise the Seapower Platform for maximum performance based on newly discovered performance-sensitive aspects of the device.
- Concept engineering of the full-scale Seapower Platform device.
- Include comprehensive tank test programmes to investigate performance in spread seas, and structural loading to inform design. This tank testing will be conducted at the Flowave Facilities in Edinburgh in early 2018.
- Front End Engineering Design of the optimised (Best LCOE) configuration for a medium-scale prototype of the Seapower Platform for offshore deployment in Billia Croo, which includes a representative PTO and control system;
- Further develop operations and maintenance strategies for array of full-scale devices.
- Planning for stage 3 deployment into the Scapa Flow and Billia Croo test sites (NWEC3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NG3yB1ufjc