The award will further strengthen OPT’s long-term involvement with England’s southwest region, where it became the first company to commit to participate in Wave Hub, the £42M wave energy farm for which the infrastructure is now under construction by SWRDA at Hayle.
With the new funding, OPT will lead a project to accelerate the development of the technology for a larger version of its utility-scale PowerBuoy for expected deployment at the Wave Hub, sponsored by SWRDA. The anticipated collaboration among OPT, A&P Falmouth and the Peninsula Research Institute for Marine Renewable Energy, which is a collaboration between the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth will contribute to the scale-up of OPT’s existing 150kW to 500kW PowerBuoy, as well as provide innovations to improve reliability and increase performance of the PowerBuoy.
Among the objectives of the project are prototype design enhancements for the PB500, with an expected output to power approximately 300 homes. Working with its partners, OPT will address additional areas of the PowerBuoy technology development program such as Design for Manufacture, materials research and site identification procedures.
This is the second award to OPT in connection with its PB500. In April 2010, parent company Ocean Power Technologies Inc was awarded $1.5M from the US Department of Energy towards the development of the next generation PowerBuoy wave power system.
