20 Sep, 2012
"We're still at the point where the car industry was of not knowing whether the engine should be at the front or the back," quips Christopher Barry, chair of the Ocean Energy Technical and Research panel at the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. "At least a dozen companies are looking into [wave power]…with at least half a dozen main ideas for getting the energy out that are distinctly different and many variants on those themes. There are lots of opportunities and we don't know which will be the winner."
In contrast, he notes, turbine technology being used for tidal power installations is well developed, with just some tweaking being done around the edges, such as creating floating versions. "Wave is quite a distance back from that," he says. Indeed, tidal installations are beginning to deliver power to grids, such as Ocean Renewable Power Company's (ORPC) Eastport, Maine deployment on September 13.
The lack of technological maturity hampers even the leaders in wave power, like Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: OPTT). Despite some notable project advances and a 38% decrease in product development costs in its fiscal 2013 first quarter ended July 31, 2012, OPT reported Friday a net loss of $4.4 million. The loss was smaller than last year's first-quarter loss of $5 million.
But even in the face of continued losses, both Barry and Dr. Paul Jacobson, water power program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, agree that OPT is the leader in wave power. "In terms of wave power in the US, [OPT] are out in front of everyone else," says Jacobson.
Specifically, says Barry, OPT is the leader in "donut on a stick" technology that uses a "latching" technique to maximize the technology's ability to generate electricity. "Latching is being widely studied, but [OPT] are probably the only folks commercializing latching technology," Barry said, adding "whether the donut on the stick technology is the right thing to do is not yet certain."
OPT's chosen technology is not the most efficient, he says, extracting only slightly more than 50% of the wave's total energy because it captures only the up-and-down motion, but he acknowledges that robustness in the ocean environment could ultimately trump higher efficiencies.
In the meantime, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission awarded OPT the first license to build a grid-connected wave power station in the U.S. The 1.5-megawatt power station off Reedsport, Oregon will be based on OPT's 150-kw PowerBuoy (PB150), which is in final assembly and inland testing. OPT expects the PB150 will be ready for deployment in early October, with actual deployment dependent on weather conditions. Following the Reedsport wave park, OPT says it intends to build up to 100 MW in Oregon. "It's just a matter of scaling up. They will be gathering information as this first phase is deployed in order to support expansion," says Jacobson.
OPT said its decline in product development costs was due primarily to the deployment of the PB150 off the coast of Scotland in 2011, and lower costs related to the Reedsport PB150 as it nears completion and deployment. The firm also says it is undertaking "other initiatives" to reduce the costs associated with wave power – in particular, the Reedsport buoy's new direct-drive power take-off system that will have lower maintenance costs that the previous hydraulic PTO.
The quarter also brought an agreement with Lockheed Martin to develop a 19-megawatt wave energy project off Portland, Victoria, Australia and a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate the use of its Autonomous PowerBuoy for ocean surveillance. In Australia, the two firms are focusing on permitting activity and getting the financing necessary to secure a previously announced A$66.5 million (US$69.5 million) grant from the Commonwealth.
Barry said it is still not clear which business model OPT intends to adopt. "Will OPT be a technology developer, build devices and lease them, or sell them to PG&E? We don't know," he said.
19 Sep, 2012
Co-authored by Dave Pratt, Director of Nautricity, and Mike Rosenfeld, Vice Consul and Senior Director for Clean Technology, North America, UK Trade and Investment
As highlighted in a recent article by Renewable Energy World, the UK is playing a leading role in the design, testing and scale-up of new ocean energy technologies. In fact, this week a delegation of British academic, government and industry representatives is bringing its marine energy know-how to Nova Scotia for the Ocean Renewable Energy Group's (OREG) annual conference. Much of the discussion at the global forum will focus on how the UK and Canada – two of the most ambitious nations in regards to developing marine energy – can best work together to accelerate development of this largely untapped clean energy resource.
This year's conference builds off momentum created last fall when British Prime Minister Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Harper signed the Canada/UK Joint Declaration, which included a commitment to transatlantic marine energy collaboration and a "plan to lead the world in moving forward from pilot wave and tidal energy devices to exploring actual power generation stations connected to our respective electricity grids." Both nations are clearly committed to developing this burgeoning industry through cooperation and coordination.
There's no doubt that the UK is being looked at as a model: test beds like the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), part of the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters Marine Energy Park (MEP) in Scotland, will continue to be instrumental in advancing the potential of ocean energy in the UK and beyond. These research centers are attracting international attention, with power players like Siemens and Alstom flocking to collaborate with academia and government to build and test new ocean power technologies at scale. They have also acted as archetypes for similar programs around the world like the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) in Canada, as well as other marine energy development centers in the U.S., Japan and even North Korea.
Equally important to moving ocean energy from pilot to the grid, however, is collaboration between the companies developing this new energy resource and those that are designing the ocean power technologies of the future.
The Canadian government has committed more than $75 million to marine renewable energy development projects in the last five years, according to OREG. Canada also has the most favorable feed in tariff in the world for ocean energy, legacy maritime infrastructure that can be tapped into, and deployment sites that are only a few meters from the electric grid. What it needs now is the technology, and that's where collaboration with the UK comes in.
The UK is home to companies engineering the next generation of marine energy technology. Nautricity, for example, is pioneering a 500kw simpler, lighter tidal turbine that doesn't need to be secured to the ocean floor with massive foundations and can be easily and cheaply deployed from small vessels. The goal was to design a turbine that is more efficient and cost-competitive than the "first generation" model of large, heavy "marinized wind turbines" that need expensive foundation structures to hold them in place on the sea bed. Testing of this most recent of Nautricity's family of devices is underway now with commercial deployment off the coast of Scotland scheduled for 2014.
Nautricity is one of several UK companies and academic institutions currently working in Canada to develop the region's ocean power industry. The company is working with private partners, research institutions and the public sector on several tidal energy prospects, on both coasts. Partnerships like these facilitate the sharing of knowledge, expertise and the needed resources to take the international ocean energy market to the next level.
With the right resources and know-how invested in it, ocean power has the potential to compete with other renewable power sources and be a viable part of the world's future energy mix. A marine energy expert at the Carbon Trust recently predicted that the cost of wave and tidal energy in Britain could fall by over half to current offshore wind levels in the next decade if more research and development is done. And, according to RenewableUK, the marine renewable industry could deliver 10,000 jobs by 2020 in the UK. This is promising news for any country looking to diversify its energy portfolio.
The challenge now, of course, is to turn this potential into reality. The marine energy industry is well on its way to realizing its potential, and with continued overseas collaboration between government, academia and companies leading the charge, this nascent industry can deliver on its promise.
At the OREG 2012 Conference this week, Nautricity is one of several British companies and institutions in a delegation led by UK Trade & Investment and Scottish Development International, the government departments that facilitate foreign business entry into the UK market.
14 Sep, 2012
Posisi anda 15, jumlah backlink = 1
Posisi 14, jumlah backlink = 5
Posisi 13, jumlah backlink = 25
Posisi 12, jumlah backlink = 125
Posisi 11, jumlah backlink = 625
Posisi 10, jumlah backlink = 3.125
Posisi 9, jumlah backlink = 15.625
Posisi 8, jumlah backlink = 78.125
Posisi 7, jumlah backlink = 390.625
Posisi 6, jumlah backlink = 1.953.125
Posisi 5, jumlah backlink = 9.765.625
Posisi 4, jumlah backlink = 48.828.125
Posisi 3, jumlah backlink = 244.140.625
Posisi 2, jumlah backlink = 1.220.703.125
Posisi 1, jumlah backlink = 6.103.515.625
