MF, We are dealing with a relative motion here so that, in principle, it doesn’t matter if the generator sits on the sea floor. In practice, the generator innards will have to be kept waterproof and putting it inside the BA gives it added protection.
The ten tonne one tenth scale prototype mentioned in the announcement is a bit of an oddity. It can only have to do with Aquamarine’s oyster which is of monstrous size. Even then 100 tonnes sounds absurd if it is just for a generator. If the scaling factor is in the mass then for final size the linear scale factor is about 2.2x The oyster sits on the sea floor of course.
The peak power of a CETO 6 unit will still only be 1MW so that the generator and its housing cannot be more than a few tonnes at most.
There are often problems of ambiguities in announcements when passed through several hands and then rearranged by the journalist at the end. The original announcement was generated by one of the two UK companies who sent it before the embargo time to all other group members. Carnegie then partially rewrites it to put itself into the script prominently. I doubt that Bosch R has done much work yet on CETO 6, if any.
Taffy, Yes, there is oodles of space in the CETO 6 buoy and it is mostly filled with water to neutral buoyancy. The total moving mass will be at least 1500 tonnes, depending on precise final dimensions. For the WaveHub project only energy is of interest so that the linear generator will provide direct conversion of motion to electrical power.
It seems that the major specification made by the board last year was that C6 output should be 1MW. After that all other design details remain approximate pending key estimates of conversion efficiency, lifting capacity (areas), etc, to yield the desired power. These should crystallise into specifics next year as C5 data is analysed.
Juke
CWE Price at posting:
4.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
