12-02-2012, 06:59 AM
The WET-NZ is in a class of wave devices known as “point absorbers.” As the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management explains, “A point absorber is a floating structure with components that move relative to each other due to wave action (e.g., a floating buoy inside a fixed cylinder). The relative motion is used to drive electromechanical or hydraulic energy converters.”
Northwest Energy Innovations says one aspect of the WET-NZ that makes it special is the ability of its float to rotate continuously and also oscillate back and forth. This allows the device to extract energy from both types of motion, the company says, while also making it less likely to be “over-stressed at the extremes of motion – an issue that has caused other wave energy technologies to suffer hydraulic ram failures … because by design they have to restrict the float motion with end-stops.”
In Hawaii, WET-NZ will benefit from a testing opportunity that had started as a Navy program, but then was superseded with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Energy. The yearlong test will take place at the Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site off of Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay, on the island of Oahu.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2012/09/nz-...egon-test/
Northwest Energy Innovations says one aspect of the WET-NZ that makes it special is the ability of its float to rotate continuously and also oscillate back and forth. This allows the device to extract energy from both types of motion, the company says, while also making it less likely to be “over-stressed at the extremes of motion – an issue that has caused other wave energy technologies to suffer hydraulic ram failures … because by design they have to restrict the float motion with end-stops.”
In Hawaii, WET-NZ will benefit from a testing opportunity that had started as a Navy program, but then was superseded with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Energy. The yearlong test will take place at the Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site off of Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay, on the island of Oahu.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2012/09/nz-...egon-test/