Energy firm Ecotricity has announced the successful completion of first stage testing of its Searaser wave energy device.
The firm has spent the last 18 months optimising the design of the device and modelling outputs in real word conditions around the coast of Britain with the assistance of marine energy consultants DNV GL Group. It says that it has put Searaser "through the most extreme testing regime" at Plymouth University's CoastLab wave tank to validate the extensive computer modelling undertaken.
Unlike other marine energy technologies, Searaser does not generate electricity out at sea but uses the motion of the ocean swell to pump high pressure seawater ashore, where it can be used to make electricity. The motion of the waves drives a piston between two buoys - one on the surface of the water, the other suspended underwater and tethered to a weight on the seabed.
As waves move past, the surface buoy moves the piston up and down, pumping volumes of pressurised seawater through a pipe to an onshore hydropower turbine to produce electricity.
The device is designed to overcome two of the biggest hurdles to the deployment of ocean energy technologies in the UK: cost and variable output, says Ecotricity. Ecotricity founder Dale Vince says that the potential for Searaser devices in the UK and abroad is "enormous".
"We believe these 'Seamills' have the potential to produce a significant amount of the electricity that Britain needs, from a clean indigenous source and in a more controllable manner than currently possible," said Vince.
Ecotricity hopes to have a full scale prototype in the ocean in the next 12 months or so - and to be producing electricity from the first commercial array of 'Searasers' within a few years.
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