The U.S. Department of Energy has pared a list of 92 entrants to just 20 in the first round of its Wave Energy Prize program.
The 20 qualified teams now enter the design-build-test portion of the competition with the goal of developing wave energy conversion (WEC) devices that will achieve the DOE”s goal of doubling energy captured.
The program, which was introduced in April by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the National Hydropower Association’s Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., is a design-build-test competition that supports the department’s goal of making marine hydrokinetic generation more competitive with traditional forms of production.
Teams that made the first round of cut were selected based on the technical quality of their submissions.
The teams will now build 1/50th scale models and participate in small-scale tank testing before the pool is further culled by next March.
Entrants that make it through the second round of selections will then receive seed money to build a 1/20th scale prototype that will undergo stank testing at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Maneuvering and Seakeeping (MASK) Basin in Carderock, Md., beginning Summer 2016.
Official qualified teams include:
- Advanced Ocean Energy @ Virginia Tech (Hampton Roads, Va.)
- AquaHarmonics (Oakland, Calif.)
- Atlantic Wavepower Partnership (Newport, R.I.)
- Atlas Ocean Systems (Houston, Texas)
- CalWave (Berkeley, Calif.)
- Enorasy Labs (Bedford, Mass.)
- Float Inc. — BergerABAM (San Diego, Calif.)
- IOwec (MIT Sea Grant College Program) (Cambridge, Mass.)
- M3 Wave (Salem, Ore.)
- Mocean Energy (Annapolis, Md.)
- OceanEnergy USA (Sacramento, Calif.)
- Oscilla Power (Seattle, Wash.)
- Principle Power (Berkeley, Calif.)
- RTI Wave Power (York, Maine)
- Sea Potential (Bristol, R.I.)
- SEWEC (Redwood City, Calif.)
- Super Watt Wave Catcher Barge Team (Houston, Texas)
- Team FLAPPER (Floating Lever and Piston Power ExtractoR) (Research Triangle Park, N.C.)
- Wave Energy Conversion Corporation of America (WECCA) (North Bethesda, Md.)
- Waveswing America (Sacramento, Calif.)
