Institution news
The achievement by AWS Ocean Energy, a small Inverness-based company, was an incredible feat given the challenges in the marine energy research and development sector.
Its boss, Simon Grey CEng MIET, has been involved in renewable energy generation since childhood. His first generator was a wind-powered device using oil drums and bicycle parts.
Simon said: “I was brought up on a remote croft in the West Highlands of Scotland where we had no mains electricity supply, but were surrounded by natural resources.
“Our first generator was wind-powered and made from two oil-drum halves and a bicycle hub dynamo. It was built by friends from Steven Salter’s wave power research team at Edinburgh University. I loved the innovation and the technology and I joined their team aged 18 as soon as I was able to leave home – that seems like a long time ago now!”
Simon says his aim is to produce a renewable, invisible, reliable and affordable alternative to diesel power for remote maritime communities. He says the Archimedes Waveswing has the potential to deliver unrivalled economics, power density and efficiency.
Dr Jenifer Baxter, the Institution's Head of Energy and Environment, said: “It is great to see innovative wave technology being celebrated and a small Scottish firm like AWS succeeding on an international platform. The Institution supports the development of a broad and flexible energy mix to deliver the needs of different communities. The AWS scheme is one such project.”
AWS worked with American partners under the team name Waveswing America for the competition. Glasgow-based engineering design firm 4c Design managed production of 1:20 scale test models, crucial for the Carderock tank trials. Engineering design and CAD development was carried out by 4c Engineering in Inverness.
The Waveswing can be scaled from a few 10s of kW to several hundred kW. In remote applications, they may be deployed as single units or in pairs, while utility-scale developments could see hundreds of Waveswings making up multi-MW arrays.
Robin Smith CEng MIMechE, managing director at 4c Design, said Simon and his colleague Jude Monson were “pioneers… who are engineering close to the limits in the most inhospitable environment on earth.”
Robin said: “AWS succeeded not with a big team, lots of money and large corporate structure, but by leveraging deep sector experience, staying agile and outsourcing R&D at the right time, to the right people and paying them well.”
The Waveswing reacts to changes in sub-sea water pressure created by waves and converts this motion to electricity via a direct-drive generator or other suitable power take-off. The system is best suited to water depths over 50m and can be configured for ratings between 25kW and 250kW.
The Wave Energy Prize was organised by the US Department of Energy. It took place over an 18-month period with successive rounds of testing and technical gates for 91 entrants. This culminated with testing at the US Navy ocean basin at Carderock, MD.
With a first prize award of $1.5 million, the competition has similarities with the XPrize space initiative, and aimed to deliver a doubling of the performance of wave energy converters (WEC) as compared with the state-of-the-art.