News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

When the U.S. Navy wants something, it usually gets it. In this case, it needs a consistent supply of energy along the countries massive coastlines in order to power their undersea surveillance. Wave energy is just the ticket for the U.S. Navy’s search for a reliable source of power supply and the oceans never stop churning.
 
America’s seemingly favorite military contractor Lockheed Martin and collaborator Ocean Power Technologies were recently granted a fifteen million dollar, four year contract that will utilize wave power to aid in protecting coastal regions from terrorist attacks. As usually happens, military innovation and spending eventually result in civilian utilization. Scaling wave power to use for public purposes is a natural progression since it is estimated that the world’s coastlines could provide two terawatts of wave force. This is two times the entire energy usage of the world presently.

Getting energy from the ocean is an exciting possibility for a renewable energy source and one that has not been tapped at any effective mass scale and this has plagued its promise. Up to this point, any authority of this wave power potential has belonged to brilliant backyard innovators. Some of these too farfetched to be of any commercial value.

With the affiliation between the huge defense contractor and the pioneering wave power company, a new dawn may have risen on these kinds of partnerships. Lockheed earned $42.7 billion last year, Ocean Power Technologies – well, suffice to say at least they made it this far.

Lockheed has a wealth of experience and knowledge working for – and on – military contracts. They also come with the mechanical and manufacturing, quality control and assessment capabilities required to make this work. Ocean Power Technologies has that brilliant pioneer and all that comes with them, tech patents, integrated hydrodynamics, energy conversion and computer systems controls and scale designing wave power capability with SCADA. The U.S. Navy comes with the strong desire to begin using renewable energy.

The idea is sound. Ocean Power Technologies designs a PowerBuoy® – this is a one hundred fifty kilowatt floating structure [point absorber], with a generator for a PTO or power take-off system. The structure has multi faceted abilities – it is scalable, but it can also produce energy in any number of wave conditions and heights. It could be used in numerous ocean current scenarios.

When the energy has been produced, it needs to get to shore somehow. Ocean Power Technologies has come through again with what they call an Underwater Substation Pod. This scalable design unit is currently awaiting a patent and can cost effectively accumulate the energy produced by upwards of ten PowerBuoy units and transport it to the coast in just one conduction cable.

The enormous defense contractor and the “backyard brainiac” will work together into the future on functional scale energy producing ventures for the U.S. Government. Two terawatts of wave power is a huge gift to a world hungry for alternate energy sources. The Jobs provided by such a technical undertaking would also quell some of that hunger.