That is most interesting detail, Taffy. Most WEC developers are...

That is most interesting detail, Taffy. Most WEC developers are very guarded about the limitations of their own designs and won’t comment about competitors in order to support the wave power industry as a whole.

For OPT it is the relative motion of the top flange plate to the bottom one that produces the pump action. If the downward force is insufficient to restore the system to its mean position it indicates that the top flange is not massive enough. Since they are not using water for mass presumably they cannot provide for tuning to wave resonance either. Seems that they did not do any wave tank testing beforehand. Some booboo.

The connecting shaft /cylinder has to be about half a wavelength so that the bottom flange remains more or less stationary. That determines the overall scale and makes the whole contraption very large and ungainly, and almost impossible to transport.

A fascinating variety of concepts for WECs have been devised for over a century but some could be excluded from being practicable at the initial doodling stage. Pelamis is also one of those, but having once started, they spent most of their time and effort attempting to solve an almost impossible problem (hinge cracking).

In contrast the CETO design remains very simple in principle.

Juke