Clean energy firm Iberdrola Renovables has begun testing of a wave energy pilot plant in Santona, in the Spanish province of Cantabria, which the company claims will become the first of this kind to be installed in Europe.
Iberdrola Renovables said that it has begun onshore testing of the operation of the internal Power Take Off (PTO) units of the buoy, which are manufactured in the US. The PTO is the unit through which wave energy is captured and processed for storage before eventually being transmitted.
The tests consist of the inspection of the components, evaluation of the individual functions of each of the systems and a final resistance test, in which the units are inter-connected and the real operating conditions the buoy will have to face in the sea are simulated, at varying surge intensities.
After completing the necessary formalities, Iberdrola Renovables will conclude the PTO testing phase and then deploy the buoy out to the sea, depending on weather conditions, with the goal of going operational in the first half of 2008.
The installation will be located 4km from the coast of Santona and will comprise 10 buoys. In the first phase a 10m long 40kW buoy will be anchored to the seabed some 50m down. The budget for the first phase, which includes the marine electrical infrastructure, comes to some E3 million. The remaining nine buoys, planned for a later phase, will have an initial capacity of 125kW.