OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems

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WavEC has been further participating in the project “Structural Design of Wave Energy Devices” (http://
www.sdwed.civil.aau.dk/), coordinated by Aalborg University and supported by the Danish Council for
Strategic Research and became also involved in two new projects initiated in 2012:
1) SI Ocean “Strategic Initiative for Ocean Energy Development” aiming to identify and develop a wide
consensus on the most effective way to tackle the key barriers to delivering a commercial wave and tidal
energy sector in Europe, with support from the Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation
(EACI) and funded by Intelligent Energy - Europe (IEE).
2) PolyWEC - Electro-active Polymers for Wave Energy Conversion, under the EU FP7 programme.
WavEC and IST are involved in the Offshore Test Station (OTS), funded by KIC InnoEnergy, in which base
technology is being developed. This includes development of hardware and software for environmental
monitoring, a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) tooling, components and methods for subsea cable
connection, a PTO concept for combined wave-wind OWC wave energy converters and operations and
maintenance (O&M) software modules for resource forecast & power and platform motions.
Portugal, through WavEC, also participates in the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA).
TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
Operational Ocean Energy Projects
Pico Plant
On the Island of Pico, Azores, WavEC runs an OWC (Oscillating Water Column; www.pico-owc.net) type
wave energy plant, presently among the very few functional wave power plants world-wide. At present,
efforts are focused to attract funding for preparing the plant as open test centre, as one full-scale turbine
duct in the structure is available. Pico OWC is a unique structure, allowing testing commercially-sized
turbines and auxiliary equipments (up to ~700kW). Despite its inclusion in the EC large-scale infrastructure
project MARiNET (http://www.fp7-marinet.eu/) and the proof of technology demonstrated over the last 2-3
years, the plant requires substantial investment in order to enable another 5-10 years of service.
New Developments
WaveRoller
The 300 kW WaveRoller unit (3 x 100 kW) has
been deployed, near Peniche, deeper than its
design depth, in order to collect validation
data for previous tank tests and fine-tune
the software that enables array optimization
for future projects. The device have recently
been brought to the surface and towed to the
harbour as a part of an O&M exercise. After
maintenance and minor repair the power plant
will be re-configured and redeployed with
only one operational panel. Subsequently, the
plant will be deployed with two- and threepanel
configurations to gather as much data
as possible about the different deployment
configurations. Installation of WaveRoller in Peniche, August 2012
ANNUAL
REPORT 2012