Waves are a hugely powerful source of renewable energy However, wave generation has yet to reach its full commercial potential. The WEDUSEA project plans to change that.
OceanEnergy has developed the OE35, the world’s largest capacity floating wave energy device. Floating on the ocean’s surface, the device incorporates a trapped air volume, with the lower part open to the sea.
Wave pressures at the submerged opening cause the water to oscillate and drive the trapped air through a turbine to generate electricity. This energy can be exported to the grid or used in other offshore applications.
The WEDUSEA project will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter at the European Marine Energy Centre’s test site in Orkney, Scotland.
The innovative actions taken in this programme aim to improve the efficiency, reliability, scalability and sustainability of wave energy technology, and reduce the Levelised Cost of Electricity of the technology by over 30%. This will help to de-risk investments in wave energy.
This will be the stepping stone to large scale commercialisation of the technology.
WEDUSEA
stands for ‘Wave Energy Demonstration at Utility Scale to Enable Arrays.’
Let's break that down
Wave Energy Demonstration
This involves taking the world’s largest floating wave energy device and trialling it over a two-year period to thoroughly assess how it performs in real Atlantic wave conditions. The device in question is the OE35 buoy, developed by wave energy specialist OceanEnergy of Ireland.
At Utility Scale
To prove the effectiveness and commercial viability of the technology, the OE35 will be connected to the grid and will be configured to generate 1 MW of electricity, thus proving that it can play a significant and reliable role in powering the grid.
To Enable Arrays
The success of this project will open the door to large-scale investment in the technology, and provide the key technical information needed to develop groups of these wave energy devices (or ‘arrays’), interconnected and supplying huge quantities of power to
the grid.
