Carnegie takes part in materials examination for WECs

January 17, 2017

Carnegie Clean Energy is participating in two Wave Energy Scotland-funded research projects to examine different materials for use in constructing wave energy converters.

Wave energy converters (WECs), including Carnegie’s CETO device, are currently typically made predominantly from steel, which is strong and durable but costly and susceptible to corrosion.

The two wave energy research projects in which Carnegie is a partner received a total of approximately £500,000 through the funding call by Wave Energy Scotland with a focus on innovative materials and manufacturing processes.

The first project Carnegie is participating involves the RePower consortium, led by Cruz Atcheson Consulting Engineers. The project received £249,614 to assess the use of hybrid structures with reinforced polymers as the prime mover of point absorber wave energy converters (WECs). Other project partners include Corpower Ocean, Arup Consulting Engineers, DNV-GL and The National Composites Centre of the United Kingdom (NCCUK).

Another project, the RotoHybrid, was allocated £250,000 to develop rotational molding of polymers for the design of WECs. The consortium is led by the University of Edinburgh and other project partners include Queen’s University Belfast, Pelagic Innovation, ÉireComposites, Kingspan Environmental.

Wave Energy Scotland awarded a total of £3 million to ten projects on January 10, 2017, to investigate the use of materials such as rubbers, plastics, concrete or combinations of these to build wave energy converters, and then test how well they survive in different sea conditions with the ultimate aim to reduce the lifetime costs of wave energy converters.

To remind, Carnegie launched 15MW CETO Wave Hub project in November last year. The project has been backed by £9.6 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for the first phase that comprises design, construction, installation and operation of a single 1MW grid-connected CETO 6 wave energy converter.

The device will be deployed at the Wave Hub testing site, off Cornwall, UK, with the commissioning set for 2018.