They won’t be entering the competition, Kingkingo. Good to see...

They won’t be entering the competition, Kingkingo. Good to see you reading widely. The Azura is a wonderful device NWEI have put together but they are already too far advanced for this particular competition. They have passed the stages of bench top model and early prototype to produce a very small 20 kW working prototype. The turbine and electrics sit in the ‘dry’ horizontal tubular cross piece. How robust will it be in a mountainous sea?

I rather like this type for the fact that it can absorb kinetic energy from both the heave and surge actions of the wave. People will remember that the water particles move in circular orbits and most WEC devices utilise only one of these component motions. Whether it absorbs the energy efficiently is yet to be determined. The brown coloured sector float (the actuator) seems to cover a long path length (a good thing) as the near vertical yellow parallel piles are allowed to oscillate. You need to see the video to observe that.

The aim of the Wave Energy Prize Competition is to seek and to encourage early stage ideas and development at bench top level and to make possible the testing of the best models in a proper wave tank setting. Getting access to such a facility is already is already a big win in itself. The US DoE sponsors this activity to further US national objectives and as such accepts applications only from US citizens or US registered entities. There are a number of overseas devices that have formed collaborations in order to satisfy the entry conditions. The DoE also gains in that it can see the comparative results from a wide range of ideas.

[Perhaps I should explain that I am most interested in all wave power generating devices and have looked at the physics of nearly all of them – there are only a limited number of basic types. After that it is just a different kind of energy collecting frame or box into which the basic type is placed. Efficiency becomes important. Ultimately it is the cost of M$ per MW of power output (while maintaining robustness in sea) that will determine which WECs will stay in the market.]

Juke