WaveNET – the Floating, Flexible Wave Energy Generator

Zothecula writes: Scotland's Albatern is putting a new, modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that harvest wave energy as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. Each Squid can link up to as many as three others, effectively creating a large, floating grid that's flexible in every direction. The bigger this grid gets, the more efficient it becomes at harvesting energy, and the more different wave movements it can extract energy from. Albatern's 10-year target is to have 1.25 kilometer-long floating energy farms pumping out as much as 100 megawatts by 2024.

Comments

Niche energy

[amorsen]

Median energy density in waves is too low in most places. You need way too large machines to extract useful amounts of power. The few times you get sufficiently powerful waves they tend to rip your equipment to bits.

Wave energy is one of those ideas which seem really obvious from a distance, so the fact that project after project fails does not seem to dissuade anyone. They were obviously just doing it wrong.

I really hope that I am wrong and this turns out to be a great success, but I am not holding my breath.

Saltwater and MTBF

[jgtg32a]

I wish them the best of luck but saltwater is particularly nasty stuff over over an extended period of time. Hopefully they can find a cheap way to insulate against it.