Image of the day: Laminaria WEC testing

 
Innosea, an engineering company that offers analysis services in the field of offshore renewables, is conducting tests on Belgian Laminaria wave energy device.

The tests are being conducted at Plymouth University’s Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport (COAST) laboratory as part of the LAMWEC project.

The main focus of the project is to prove the survivability of the Laminaria WEC. It is funded by the OCEANERA-NET initiative, and involves Laminaria, European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), Innosea, Ghent University, and TTI Testing.

The LAMWEC project will culminate in the testing and performance assessment of Laminaria’s wave converter at EMEC’s grid-connected wave test site at Billia Croo, off Orkney, in 2017.

Laminaria’s technology, a surge operated attenuator, is constituted from vertical surface that interacts with the incoming horizontal wave energy.

As a result of the horizontal movement in the water, the Laminaria WEC is subjected to a tilting and translational motion, which is transferred through the mooring ropes to the generators.