Unlimited Wave Energy: This Buoy is the Future

waves in our ocean are an incredible source of power that could in theory meet the whole of global electricity demand however harnessing wave power has been a centuries long Quest littered with failure but that could all be set to change a floating wave energy converter called the C4 by Sweden's Core Power has taken inspiration from the human heart and combined it with world-class engineering to deliver some incredible results in this video we'll look at the design that allows the C4 to capture a reported five times more energy per ton than other wave systems however before they started optimizing the energy from their device there was a bigger challenge they had to solve and that was making sure the whole thing didn't get ripped apart in the ocean when I studied wave energy at University it was like a postmortem of failed systems since 179 9 ideas and patents have come thick and fast these ideas have yielded devices with fantastic names like the Salter duck Mighty whale and the oyster there are now more than 1,500 wave energy patents out there but Commercial Success has been elusive this is largely because wave power has historically had two very expensive problems efficiency and survivability so to really test the survivability of their vention The Core Power Team chose to do their testing off the coast of North Portugal where their system was subject to four powerful Atlantic storms and amazingly it survived all of them without a problem one of their secrets to this incredible survivability is that Core Power uses composite boys that are lightweight and tough in a type of wave of energy converter known as a point absorber Tethered to the seabed they oscillate with the waves mostly up and down capturing wave energy the C4 harnesses the linear up and down movement and turns it into rotation creating electricity via a Cascade of small gears powering an onboard generator even with safety constraints on velocity and stroke the six-month test in Portugal achieved a peak power of 600 KW for comparison wind turbines with equal power ratings are twice as tall with rotors four times wider and much more complex to deploy however just using tough boys is not the ingenious invention that sets Core Power apart instead there are a few other breakthroughs that help address the system efficiency and survivability in much more interesting ways one of these is called the wavespring system that builds on an older breakthrough a hydraulic pump invented by a cardiologist the cardiac cycle takes less than a second but as cardiologist Dr Stig lundback discovered it's mind-blowingly efficient this is in part because the heart only uses energy when it contracts and pushes blood out into the body to fill back up all it needs to do is relax and let pressure in the rest of the body push blood back into it this means that with one contraction blood flows in two directions this idea of using builtup pressure to get blood flowing in two directions from one action is what got Dr Stig lback thinking about wave energy because just like the heart waves only push in One Direction in 1984 Dr lundback patented the dynamic adaptive piston pump like the heart it's a single pump with a dual action decades later he co-founded Core Power and put this mechanism to good use however unlike the heart The Core Power C4 uses pneumatic systems meaning that they work with Air instead of fluid as the boy rises in a wave the central pneumatic cylinder and springs store up the pressure then this stored pressure can provide a returning Force as the boy goes back down where the central cylinder pulls back on the rods that are secured to the ocean floor with an anchor therefore the C4 boy can capture the maximum wave energy throughout the whole cycle instead of just the upstroke this pneumatic system also helps with survivability this is because when a storm comes the pressure can be increased inside to prevent the boy going all the way up and down with the harsh ocean waves this state is known as the detuned storm protection State and can be compared to a wind turbine pitching its blades during high winds this ability to Shield itself from large waves is how the C4 survived Atlantic storms with record-breaking waves of 18.5 M however when the waves are good the C4 boy can instead be continuously tuned to work with the waves this tuning is done using the onboard generator alongside the wider wavespring system the wavespring was invented by Dr hals when designing the system he had to do lots of 3D modeling and testing which is why before looking into the wavespring further I need to tell you about today's sponsor onshape onshape is a professional grade computer aided design software that is completely free for all makers and hobbyists forever it's even free for engineers and companies for 6 months so they can properly try it out it's amazing that we live in a world where you can log onto a website without downloading anything and within 2 minutes be making anything your mind can think of like I've done with so many projects because on shape is built with a cloud native architecture it enables features such as real-time collaboration seamless integration with mobile and tablet use for IOS and Android and built-in product data management Cloud Autos saving also means you won't ever lose all of your work halfway through a project file sharing can also be as simple as just sending a link like the ones I've left in the description on shape is continuously adding new features so make sure to go and get a free account using my link on shape. prozero and start making whatever you can think of and that link is also down in the description now to look at how the wavespring and Generator work together to maximize energy from the Waves by allowing the pneumatic Springs and cylinder to compress and expand hence storing energy and releasing energy it shifts the movement of the device more in line with the waves a smart control system also chooses how hard the generator works so it extracts energy at the perfect time this further helps to ensure the boy continues to move in Phase with the waves which is best for maximizing power extraction one of their scientific papers claimed that this increases the overall energy extraction by three times compared to a passive system an analogy for how this works is like a well-timed push on a swing by managing when energy is stored Ed or released the motion of the swing or boy can be optimized just like pushing a swing at the right time using the generator to control the flow of energy can keep everything moving in time and improve Energy Efficiency I briefly mentioned this earlier but in order for the boy to pull or push itself back towards the ocean it needs to be Tethered to the ocean floor each boy is anchored to the seabed by a tensioned moing system called the umac or Universal moing anchoring and connectivity kit according to Core Power the umac anchor outperforms gravity anchors and conventional monopiles in terms of holding capacity cost and carbon footprint it is also installed with a highspeed and low noise method making it friendlier to marine life as well as withstanding extreme forces it also acts as a secure path for electrical cables to come from The Boy The Wider vision is to have a of boys or cor packs laid out side by side in sets of 5 10 and 30 megaw to form wave Farms from here electricity will be delivered to the grid collection hubs connected to a single export cable amazing technology aside the real driver for these Innovations is the final levelized cost of electricity which measures the average total cost to produce one unit of energy over the lifetime of the system fact in in construction operation and maintenance here is what Miguel Sila managing director of Core Power had to say on the topic in an interview he did with the team enet who I'll leave a link to in the description below the design from the device and the concept behind it it it has always lcoe as the main metric so the levelized cost of electricity so when you design the machine and each of its components you're thinking about the levelized cost of energy so for example on the C four that you see behind us you have a composite hole it's a choice for lcoe it's a it's a choice that moved us away from traditional Halls of Steel that are very vulnerable to raw material price fluctuation and we moved to a high efficiency mostly fully automated process to manufacture from resin and fiberglass so this immediately gave us a 70% reduction on lcoe so this is an example how the the design is tuned biometric that is feeding to the one of the big targets it has to have to have a competitive technology in the market reports say that when a cumulative capacity of 600 megawatt is installed by 2025 the levelized cost of energy will be around $75 per megawatt hour I've also seen that if they can install 20 gaw of these boys it will drop as low as $35 per megawatt hour which is competitive with wind and solar this cost-driven approach is also how the umac anchor was born Core Power says that its installation by vibro Hammer is 15 to 20 DB quieter than any other method which would really help underwater noise pollution and I love the way that it came about when we thought about the mooding system there were anchors in the market were very expensive so the company decide okay let's stop and think let's do our own anchor system we have always a collaborative approach where we work with private sector and with Academia all together and we got this very nice uh Universal Ming anchor that will be a solution for wave energy but also for other markets for example floating offshore wind and all these are winds after the success of the C4 tests they'll now be testing for all of the arrays which will also be done off the North Coast of Portugal with more boys out at Sea in bigger arrays for longer periods in potentially even bigger storms a lot is riding on how well they survived the violent and corrosive ocean that's been the Nemesis of so many systems but so far things are looking positive with continued investment it might not be long before Core Power arrays can provide significant Renewable Power to our energy grids in coastal regions what I love about engineering is how Innovation builds sometimes over centuries layer on layer of success and failure add up with core Powers breakthroughs and continued development commercial wave power is a lot closer than it was and I can't wait to see how they get on if you've enjoyed this video please subscribe it's free and helps me continue to bring videos on the sustainable engineering that's happening around our world you might also like a recent video I did on these really efficient LEDs that were inspired by nature and fireflies and if you got other subjects you'd like me to explore please leave them in the comments below thanks for watching

Channel: Ziroth

Views: 216,123

Keywords: Science, Engineering, STEM, Electric, Zero, Tesla, News, Research, EV, Battery, wave

Id: 3X2PqKKPb48

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024