Marine Energy

Marine Hydrokinetics

News related to the marine hydrokinetics industry in North America for June 2014
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DOE announces wave and tidal energy research funding

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy has announced several funding programs aimed at strengthening America’s wave and tidal energy industry. These efforts, as detailed below, demonstrate DOE’s growing commitment to marine hydrokinetic technology and its continued development.

The awards granted were intended to support the design, manufacture, demonstration and testing of marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) technology. Offered by DOE’s Water Power Program are:

– Administration of the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) Prize: The department will award up to $6.5 million to an administrator tasked with developing a competition for “developers new to the industry and next generation ideas from existing developers by offering a monetary prize purse and providing an opportunity for tank testing and evaluation of scaled WEC prototypes.”

– Environmental Stewardship for Renewable Energy Technologies: MHK Environmental and Resource Characterization Instrumentation: DOE will make $3.5 million available for the development and testing of MHK sensors, instrumentation and processing techniques “to collect physical data on ocean waves.”

– Marine and Hydrokinetic (MHK) Research and Development University Consortium: The purpose of this FOA is to leverage the field R&D expertise and intellectual capital of domestic universities to advance MHK technology in the U.S. in the following areas: device and/or array operation and maintenance logistics development; high-fidelity resource characterization and/or modeling technique development and validation; distributed application device development and techno-economic studies; array-specific component technology development; array performance testing and evaluation; and novel cost-effective environmental monitoring techniques and instrumentation testing and evaluation.

As DOE offers new financial opportunities for development in the sector, they are posted at energy.gov/eere/water/financial-opportunities.

OPT formally drops 1.5-MW Reedsport wave energy project

Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has formally ended planning and development of Oregon’s first commercial wave energy project off the coast of Reedsport.

The wave energy developer pulled the plug on the project in April due to inadequate funding and an opportunity to focus on a different project under development in Australia, the development company said.

“In consultation with the Department of Energy, OPT has made the decision to terminate further work on the project and initiate decommission and close-out activities,” said Kevin Watkins, a representative of the company. OPT plans to decommission the anchor that was installed on the ocean floor for the project this summer.

The project would have been the first of its kind in North America and was the first wave energy device to receive a preliminary permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A 35-year license was granted to construct the nation’s first commercial-scale wave project in 2012.

The design had 10 PowerBuoy wave energy converters installed in a 35-acre area of the Pacific Ocean 2.5 miles off the coast of Douglas County, Ore. The project’s design allowed the ability to scale up to 50 MW over time. Commissioning for the 10-buoy design was originally planned for October 2012 but stalled after a delayed deployment of the first buoy.

OPT has not released word on what will be done with the one finished buoy.

Canadian, UK groups sign MOU for tidal energy development

A memorandum of understanding announced in March by parties from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and the United Kingdom is intended to encourage cooperation in tidal energy research.

Included in the agreement are the province, Offshore Energy Research Association of Nova Scotia (OERA) and U.K.’s Technology Strategy Board.

Although the goal is to foster joint research in the marine and hydrokinetics sector, the memorandum specifically targets improvements that could be used to further the technology required to produce energy in high-tide areas like Canada’s Bay of Fundy.

OERA and the Technology Strategy Board will oversee the majority of the work outlined in the memorandum. Each will contribute US$226,000 to the effort.

Outlined as an area of collaboration are environmental sensing research and instrumentation technologies, which will be used to understand high-flow tidal resources in both the Bay of Fundy and Orkney, Scotland.