U.S.-based startup CalWave announced the successful completion of an open-ocean test of its xWave clean power technology this week.
U.S.-based startup CalWave announced the successful completion of an open-ocean test of its xWave clean power technology this week, aThe company's device, which is designed to harness the power of the waves to produce electricity, demonstrated over 99 percent system uptime during the tests off the coast of San Diego, which lasted a total of 10 months.
CalWave believes it can harness the waves to become the first company to deploy wave energy systems at a mass scale. Before it can do so, more trials are needed, and it will also have to reveal more in the way of specifications about its submerged system.The wave energy technology industry is really still in its early development phase. Though there are many wave energy companies, it's still yet to take off at a massive scale.
The hard part is harnessing that energy in an efficient manner, though CalWave believes it has the solution. The company's xWave is a buoyant platform that's anchored to the sea floor using a tether to hold it under the water's surface. CalWave tested a 1/20th-scale model in a test basin in 2016, but now it has successfully put a full-sized model to the test.
CalWave has yet to reveal much in the way of specifications for how its system works. In a video the company posted last year, COO Dan Petcovic said, "as a wave passes over the top, you get a pressure wave that causes motion relative to the sea floor, and with our anchors on the sea floor, we convert that relative motion to power."The xWave is run underwater to protect it from catastrophic damage caused by rough seas.
that the platform "achieved high performance as targeted and predicted," and that it required zero operator interventions. The company also said the xWave successfully shut itself down during rough conditions.. For starters, xWave is yet to announce how much energy the xWave produces — though it has announced it will soon deploy a 100-kilowatt version of the xWave off the coast of Oregon for a two-year trial.