Giant buoys over 60-feet tall may one day generate clean energy to feed into local power grids—but making it a reality isn’t as simple as going with the ocean’s flow. To successfully keep the idea afloat, it’s all about timing.
Swedish company CorPower recently announced the completion of its first commercial scale buoy generator demonstration program off the coast of northern Portugal. Over the course of a six-month test run, CorPower’s three-story C4 Wave Energy Converter (WEC) endured four major Atlantic storms and adapted to constantly shifting wave heights. Although final analysis is still ongoing, CorPower believes the technology offers a promising new way to transition towards a sustainable future.
As New Atlas explains, the basic theory behind CorPower’s C4 is relatively straightforward. As its air-filled chassis bobs along the rolling waves, an internal system converts the up-and-down movement into rotational power for energy generation. At the same time, however, a tensioned, internal pneumatic cylinder reacts in real-time to wave phases—slightly delaying its movements behind the waves amplifies the buoy’s bobbing, thus creating even more energy production. According to CorPower, using this system can boost power generation as much as 300-percent.
But what about when the sea inevitably gets choppier, as was the case during storms that produced waves nearly as high as the C4 itself? When this happens, the pneumatic cylinder switches off its active control to allow the machine to enter “transparent” mode, during which time it simply rides out the adverse ocean conditions until it’s time to spring back into action. CorPower compares this “tuning and detuning” feature to similar systems in wind turbines, which adjust the pitch of their blades in response to surrounding weather conditions.
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