WaveRoller ready for operation

The power take-off system (PTO) of AW-Energy’s WaveRoller wave energy device has passed the 6-month inspection with flying colors, the company informed.

Following the conclusion of the trials, conducted at AW-Energy’s PTO testing facility in Järvenpää, Finland, the device was shut down in mid-February for the first scheduled inspection.

The ongoing development work resulted in distribution grid code compliance, achieved at the centre, meaning that the WaveRoller’s electricity meets the strictest utility criteria worldwide, the Finnish-based wave energy developer stated.

During the shutdown, the PTO of the first commercial scale 350 kW WaveRoller, soon to be deployed in Portugal, has been tuned-up to meet the local wave conditions.

Sami Pasanen, Chief Engineer at the WaveRoller test centre in Järvenpää, said: “We’ve reached an important milestone in demonstrating our PTO technology and the team is looking forward to commence the final preparations to finish the PTO for the first-of-a-kind deployment. We now ensure that all parts work seamlessly together and fine-tune the control algorithm to meet the demands for operation in ocean conditions.”

The wave machine at AW-Energy’s PTO facility consists of a giant hydraulic piston that simulates the power of natural waves in the ocean. The full-scale wave machine can be programmed to run any stochastic wave state up to 2 MW. This unit is connected to the PTO of the WaveRoller, a sophisticated hydraulic circuit running an electric generator.

The PTOs of all WaveRollers can thus be fine-tuned on dry land to exactly match the local wave conditions where each WaveRoller device is to be deployed, AW-Energy informed.

In order to follow best practice and garner experience from other industries – a reliability, availability, maintainability and serviceability (RAMS) study is carried out together with experts from VTT -Technical Research Centre of Finland.

A part of the results from the inspections will be used to improve the reliability model and guide decisions, AW-Energy said in a press release.