This deployment is an autonomous PowerBuoy designed and manufactured by the company under the US Navy’s Littoral Expeditionary Autonomous PowerBuoy (LEAP) program for coastal security and maritime surveillance.
OPT said that the LEAP PowerBuoy structure, incorporating a power take-off and on-board energy storage system, is smaller and more compact than its standard utility PowerBuoy.
It provides persistent, off-grid clean energy in remote ocean locations for a wide variety of maritime security and monitoring applications.
Under the LEAP program, OPT has integrated the autonomous PowerBuoy with radar network and communications infrastructure from Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences in partnership with CODAR Ocean Sensors.
This PowerBuoy provides power at the lower levels needed for the sophisticated vessel detection and tracking system, enabling maritime surveillance in the near coast, harbors and littoral zones worldwide.
OPT developed the LEAP PowerBuoy system to provide constant power in all wave conditions for the sea-based radar and communications system.
The LEAP system will be ocean-tested about 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey, and will be integrated with the Rutgers University-operated radar network that provides ocean current mapping data for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and US Coast Guard search and rescue operations.
