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"GRAMPUS" Starts Development Programme

OWEL has recently completed a 2 year test programme for the OWEL Wave Energy Converter (Grampus) with support from the Carbon Trust. This innovative Power System will harness the energy in ocean waves to generate green electricity with negligible release of pollutants.

A previously completed Feasibility Study supported by a DTI SMART award concluded that the OWEL system could efficiently use wave energy to compress air, which in turn would produce a unidirectional flow of air to drive a turbine. The Feasibility Study has been followed by a 2 year development programme, sponsored by the Carbon Trust and the OWEL shareholding partners, which has confirmed the initial positive findings and expanded on the OWEL knowledge base.

The Development Programme included tank-testing an 18 metre long physical model in the scaled equivalent of ocean waves together with extensive mathematical modelling of the internal hydrodynamics and aerodynamics using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques.

OWEL shareholders include, Professor John Kemp, Sycamore Project Engineering Ltd, IT Power Ltd, Business Link Wessex and NaREC.

Professor Kemp said, "The welcome contribution from the Carbon Trust has allowed us to confirm and refine the highly promising results of the Feasibility Study and strengthen the case for proceeding to a final development phase."

"The 'Grampus' has a number of important features," said Professor Kemp: 

"It is a floating device so that deployment and decommissioning are simple, and it is designed to be anchored in offshore areas where energetic wave spectra are found. By the time waves reach the shoreline, they have typically lost 80% of their energy a major disadvantage for on-shore wave energy converters,"
"It is of simple construction with no moving parts in contact with the water. It can therefore be made large enough to capture commercial quantities of wave energy at low first cost and with a small maintenance effort,"
"It is robust and avoids storm damage by allowing excessively high waves to wash freely over the platform."
"It is intended that the results of the Development Programme will lead on to the construction and deployment at sea of a full-scale prototype capable of generating more than a megawatt of electrical power. Production units would generate many megawatts."

 
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